As per the health ministry operated by Hamas, almost 40,000 people have died in Gaza.
According to the health ministry operated by Hamas, women, children, and the elderly make up the majority of those who have been identified as murdered.
Since the Hamas-led offensive on Israel on October 7, more than 40,000 Palestinians have lost their lives as a result of Israeli military operations in Gaza, according to the health ministry operated by Hamas.
This figure (40,005 on Thursday) represents roughly 1.7% of the 2.3 million people living in the region, which is just another depressing example of the human cost of the conflict.
In addition to the deaths, an analysis of satellite images indicates that since the start of the conflict, around 60% of Gaza's buildings have sustained damage or been completely destroyed.
According to photos, the city of Rafah in the south has sustained the worst damage in recent months. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians when calculating the death toll.
Nonetheless, according to its breakdown of recognised recorded fatalities, children, women, and the elderly make up the majority. The Israeli military informed the BBC this month that the conflict had claimed the lives of around 15,000 militants. Israel prevents foreign journalists, including the BBC, from freely accessing Gaza, making it impossible for them to objectively confirm the accuracy of any side's claims. In the past, the UN and other international organisations considered the data from the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) to be trustworthy and frequently utilised during times of conflict.
Only hospital deaths that were recorded and had their names, identifying numbers, and other information uploaded into a central system were counted.
But by the end of the year, the MoH was struggling to continue operating due to overcrowded mortuaries, violence within and outside of hospitals, and inadequate phone and internet access. The Gaza-based Hamas Government Media Office (GMO) started releasing death toll figures along with information from "reliable media."
When changes were available, UN agencies began to include this in their data breakdowns and MoH figures. More recently, Gaza's MoH started including deaths from the conflict, including those reported by relatives online, to its total count. On the other hand, it also counts the quantity of unidentified bodies among all the dead individually.
Now that the UN is quoting these numbers, they are crediting them and emphasising that because of the circumstances on the ground and the large number of deaths, their Gaza teams are unable to independently verify them. Israel has continuously challenged the accuracy of the data. Israel Katz, the foreign minister, called it "fake data from a terrorist group" in May. Experts have expressed the belief that the true death toll from the conflict in Gaza is probably far higher; local authorities estimate that approximately 10,000 bodies are still under the debris of buildings struck by Israeli airstrikes.
15. Ali Ashraf Ata Gheith told the BBC that he dug his deceased family members out of the debris of their bombed-out house over the course of two months. When a blow hit it, his mother, father, brother, and two sisters perished.
Ali was also inside the building, but he made it out alive after spending seven hours buried beneath the debris. He started attempting to recover his family's bodies as soon as he was outside. "I could see my father beneath the debris, but at first I couldn't get him out because he was between two cement columns and the ceiling would have fallen in." He crumbled before my very eyes," he remarked.
Researchers note that even after hostilities end, a large number of people may still perish from indirect reasons such starvation and illness in addition to the number of persons slain in the conflict. In the end, efforts to locate the missing and retrieve dead should enable a more precise estimate of the death toll—including a figure for combatants—to be determined after the war. It is reasonable to anticipate that the Israeli military, the UN, and human rights organisations will conduct independent enquiries.
According to an examination of satellite images, since the start of the conflict, about 59.3% of Gaza's buildings have suffered damage or have been completely demolished. Corey Scher of City University of New York and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University conducted the damage analysis, which compares photos to identify abrupt changes in building height or structure.
The professional study indicates that since March, the number of damaged structures in the southern city of Rafah has increased at the fastest rate. Most of the devastation occurred following Israel's attack on the city on May 6. According to the military, capturing the region and removing the last few Hamas battalions are essential to accomplishing its combat objectives.
A significant portion of the city appears to be in ruins in satellite imagery reviewed by BBC Verify, especially in the neighbourhoods to the north and south and near the border with Egypt. There has been aerial bombardment and demolition by Israeli forces on the ground in various locations of Rafah, according to footage uploaded by Israel's military and verified by the BBC on social media.
The referred to as Philadelphi corridor, a buffer zone along the 14 km (9 mi) boundary with Egypt, has seen land clearing, according to satellite photography. Upon doing a study of the imagery, BBC Verify observed that Israeli military vehicles were present in many sites along the route where building clearance had occurred. One suburb that is situated at the border with the ocean was completely demeged in just one month after the Rafah operation began.
An Israeli soldier captured footage from the ground demonstrating the eventual construction of an observation tower nearby. Crucial Rafah sites destroyed by the operation include the main market, multiple large mosques, and the border crossing.
At the Rafah border crossing on May 7, Israeli tanks were seen smashing a "Welcome to Gaza" sign, according to footage that the BBC confirmed. The Abrar mosque's blue dome was also damaged, according to footage that was uploaded on identical day. Subsequent satellite photography revealed that the building was eventually demolished.
Another social media video, posted on June 27, showed the famed Al-Najma roundabout in Rafah, along with surrounding buildings severely destroyed, with churned-up roads and verdant lawns. On October 7, thousands of Hamas fighters poured into southern Israel, starting the battle. According to Israeli counts, they killed nearly 1,200 people and took 251 captives.
