RAFAH, Gaza Strip, 22 Dec: More than 20,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza during Israel\u2019s war against Hamas, health officials said Friday, 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.
\nThe deaths, amounting to nearly 1% of the territory\u2019s prewar population, are just one measure of the devastation wrought by the conflict that over 11 weeks has displaced nearly 85% of Gaza\u2019s people and leveled wide swaths of the tiny coastal enclave.
\nMore than half a million people in Gaza \u2014 a quarter of the population \u2014 are starving, according to a report Thursday from the United Nations and other agencies describing the crisis caused by Israel\u2019s bombardment and siege of the territory in response to Hamas\u2019 Oct. 7 attack.
\nDespite the emergency, a U.N. Security Council vote on aid deliveries and terms for a cease-fire was delayed again late Thursday, after days of high-level negotiations.
\nThe United States, which has veto power, has pushed back against calls for an immediate cease-fire and giving the U.N. sole responsibility for inspecting aid deliveries. Israel, citing security grounds, insists it needs to be able to screen goods entering Gaza.
\nThe U.S. said it would back a revised resolution that calls for \u201ccreating the conditions\u201d for a cease-fire, 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 is expected Friday.
\nMartin Griffiths, the U.N. humanitarian affairs chief, lamented the world\u2019s inaction.
\n\u201cThat such a brutal conflict has been allowed to continue and for this long \u2014 despite the widespread condemnation, the physical and mental toll and the massive destruction \u2014 is an indelible stain on our collective conscience,\u201d he wrote in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
\nIsrael, shielded by the United States, 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.
\nThe military has said that months of fighting lie ahead in southern Gaza, an area packed with the vast majority of the enclave\u2019s 2.3 million people, many of whom were ordered to flee combat in the north earlier in the war.
\nSince then, evacuation orders have pushed displaced civilians into ever-smaller areas of the south as troops focus on the city of Khan Younis, Gaza\u2019s second-largest.
\nThe military said late Thursday that it is sending more ground forces, including combat engineers, to Khan Younis to target Hamas militants above ground and in tunnels, and on Friday, it ordered tens of thousands of residents to leave their homes in Burej, an urban refugee camp, and surrounding communities, also in the south.
\nIn the city of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, an airstrike on a house killed six people, according to Associated Press journalists who saw the bodies at a hospital. Among the dead were a blind man, his wife and their 4-month-old child, said the infant\u2019s grandfather, Anwar Dhair.
\nRafah is one of the few places in Gaza not under evacuation orders, but has been targeted in Israeli strikes almost every day.
\nThe air and ground campaign also continued in the north, even as Israel says it is in the final stages of clearing out Hamas militants there.
\nMustafa Abu Taha, a Palestinian farm worker, said many areas of his hard-hit Gaza City neighborhood of Shijaiyah have become inaccessible because of massive destruction from airstrikes.
\n\u201cThey are hitting anything moving,\u201d he said of Israeli forces.
\nGaza\u2019s Health Ministry said Friday that it has documented 20,057 deaths in the fighting and more than 50,000 wounded. It does not differentiate between combatant and civilian deaths. It has previously said that roughly two-thirds of the dead were women or minors.
\nIsrael blames Hamas for the high civilian death toll during its intense air and ground campaign, citing the group\u2019s use of crowded residential areas for military purposes.
\nIsrael declared war after Hamas militants stormed across its border and killed some 1,200 people and kidnapped 240 others. Israel\u2019s military says 139 of its soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive. It says it has killed thousands of Hamas militants, including about 2,000 in the past three weeks, but it has not presented any evidence to back up the claim.
\nMeanwhile, phone and internet services were gradually being restored late Thursday, after the latest communications blackout of 35 hours.
\nRepeated cuts in communications have hampered aid deliveries, which cover only a fraction of the unprecedented humanitarian needs in Gaza.
\nThe hunger eclipsed even the near-famines of recent years in Afghanistan and Yemen, according to Thursday\u2019s report, which warned that the risk of famine is \u201cincreasing each day,\u201d blaming the hunger on insufficient aid entering Gaza.
\n\u201cI have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza. And at this speed,\u201d said Arif Husain, chief economist for the U.N.\u2019s World Food Program.
\nAn Israeli liaison officer with Gaza claimed there is no food shortage in Gaza, saying sufficient aid is getting through.
\n\u201cThe reserves in Gaza Strip are sufficient for the near term,\u201d Col. Moshe Tetro, a defense official, said from the Kerem Shalom cargo crossing, opened by Israel several days ago amid international demands to improve the flow of aid. Tetro did not elaborate. AP<\/p>\n
The war has also pushed Gaza\u2019s health sector into collapse.
\nOnly nine of its 36 health facilities are still partially functioning, all located in the south, according to the World Health Organization.
\nThe agency reported soaring rates of diseases in Gaza, including a five-fold rise in diarrhea and increases in cases of meningitis, skin rashes and scabies.
\nWHO relief workers reported \u201cunbearable\u201d scenes in two hospitals they visited in northern Gaza: Bedridden patients with untreated wounds cry out for water, the few remaining doctors and nurses have no supplies, and bodies are lined up in the courtyard.
\n\u201cWith the health system on its knees,\u201d the organization said, \u201cthose facing the deadly combination of hunger and disease are left with few options.\u201d AP<\/p>\n
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