More than 20,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza during Israel’s war against Hamas, health officials said yesterday, the latest indication of the staggering cost of the conflict as Israel expands its ground offensive and orders tens of thousands more people to leave their homes.
The deaths, amounting to nearly 1 percent of the territory’s prewar population, are just one measure of the devastation wrought by the conflict that over 11 weeks has displaced nearly 85 percent of Gaza’s people and leveled wide swaths of the tiny coastal enclave.
More than half a million people in Gaza — a quarter of the population — are starving, according to a Thursday report from the UN and other agencies describing the crisis caused by Israel’s bombardment and siege on the territory in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
Photo:AFP
Despite the emergency, a UN Security Council vote on aid deliveries and terms for a ceasefire was delayed again late on Thursday, after days of high-level negotiations.
The US, which has veto power, has pushed back against calls for an immediate ceasefire and giving the UN sole responsibility for inspecting aid deliveries. Israel, citing security grounds, insists it needs to be able to screen goods entering Gaza.
The US said it would back a revised resolution that calls for “creating the conditions” for a ceasefire, rather than an immediate end to fighting. Other countries support a stronger text and said diplomats would need to consult their governments before a vote, which was expected later yesterday.
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths lamented the world’s inaction.
“That such a brutal conflict has been allowed to continue and for this long — despite the widespread condemnation, the physical and mental toll and the massive destruction — is an indelible stain on our collective conscience,” he wrote in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Israel has resisted international pressure to scale back its offensive and has said it would press on until Hamas, the militant group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years, has been destroyed.
The military has said that months of fighting lie ahead in southern Gaza, an area packed with the vast majority of the enclave’s 2.3 million people, many of whom were ordered to flee combat in the north in earlier stages of the war.
Since then, evacuation orders have pushed displaced civilians into ever-smaller areas of the south as troops focus on the city of Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest.
The Israeli military late on Thursday said that it is sending more ground forces, including combat engineers, to Khan Younis to target Hamas militants above ground and in tunnels.
Yesterday, the Israeli military ordered tens of thousands of residents to leave their homes in Burej, an urban refugee camp, and surrounding communities, within the territory that Israel originally told people to flee to.
The air and ground campaign also continued in the north, even as Israel said it is in the final stages of clearing out Hamas militants there.
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