GAZA CITY: The health ministry in Gaza said on Saturday that 32 people were killed in the Palestinian territory over the past 48 hours, taking the overall death toll to 46,537 as Israel intensified bombardment despite truce talks with Hamas.
The ministry said at least 109,571 people have been wounded in more than 15 months of Israeli bombardment campaign launched after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.
The ministry of health added 499 deaths to its death toll on Saturday, specifying they have now completed the data and confirmed identities on files whose information was incomplete.
The number of dead in Gaza has become a matter of bitter debate since Israel launched its military campaign in October 2023.
A study published Friday by the British medical journal The Lancet estimated that the death toll in Gaza during the first nine months of Israeli attacks was around 40 percent higher than recorded by the health ministry.
The new peer-reviewed study used data from the ministry, an online survey and social media obituaries, but only counted deaths from traumatic injuries. It did not include those from a lack of health care or food, or the thousands of missing believed to be buried under rubble.
The UN considers the Gaza health ministry’s numbers to be reliable.
Malnutrition in Gaza
Amid Israeli bombardment, parents of children suffering from malnutrition in Gaza have been trying to find relief at UN medical centres but say Israel’s forced evacuation orders are making their situation worse.
“The reason behind my daughter’s condition is displacement. We fled from the north to Rafah and then to Deir el-Balah, where we lived in a tent,” the mother of Misk al-Madhoun, a malnourished child, told Al Jazeera.
“Her malnutrition worsened due to prolonged displacement, lack of food, and financial hardship since my husband’s work stopped during the war”, she said.
Others say charitable measures are still not enough in the face of Israel’s blockade on food aid.
“We do not work and we do not have money. We depend on charities,” said Ahmad al-Asi, displaced from the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahiya to the Strip’s south.
“The Rafah charity is the only charity that we depend on a lot, and with it, we can feed our children, but it is not enough.”
The UN has refuted Israel’s claims that Hamas is stealing food supplies and instead blames it for the worsening crisis in the besieged enclave.
