GAZA CITY, Palestine: Israeli strikes have killed 51 Palestinians in Gaza over the past 24 hours, the territory’s Health Ministry said on Sunday, bringing the overall death toll from the Israel-Hamas war since 7 October 2023 to 52,243.
The overall toll includes nearly 700 bodies for which the documentation process was recently completed, the ministry said in its latest update.
The daily toll includes bodies retrieved from the rubble after earlier Israeli strikes.
Israel ended its ceasefire with Hamas by launching a surprise bombardment on March 18 and has been carrying out daily waves of strikes since then.
Ground forces have expanded a buffer zone and encircled the southern city of Rafah, and now control around 50 percent of the territory.
Israel has also sealed off the territory’s 2 million Palestinians from all imports, including food and medicine, for nearly 60 days.
Aid groups say supplies will soon run out and that thousands of children are malnourished.
Israeli authorities say the renewed offensive and tightened blockade are aimed at pressuring Hamas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed or disarmed, and all the hostages are returned.
Progress in ceasefire talks
Hamas has said it will only release the remaining 59 hostages — 24 of whom are believed to be alive — in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said on Sunday that he noticed some progress in Thursday’s Gaza ceasefire talks.
Leaders of the Palestinian group Hamas recently met mediators in Cairo for ceasefire talks.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says women and children make up most of the Palestinian deaths. The ministry said another 117,600 people have been wounded in the war.
The overall tally includes 2,151 dead and 5,598 wounded since Israel resumed the war last month.
Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and it blames Hamas for their deaths and claims that the Palestinian group operate in densely populated areas.
Israel’s offensive has destroyed vast parts of Gaza and displaced around 90 percent of its population, leaving hundreds of thousands of people sheltering in squalid tent camps or bombed-out buildings.
Looming famine in Gaza
Jonathan Whittall, the head of the UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA) in Gaza, said Israel’s “total and complete blockade” of the Strip, which is nearing the end of its second month, is causing “endless suffering”.
“The coming days in Gaza are going to be critical. Today, people are not surviving in Gaza. Those that aren’t being killed with bombs and bullets are slowly dying,” Whittall told journalists at a news conference in Gaza City.
“As humanitarians, we can see that aid is being weaponised through its denial,” he said. “There’s no justification for the denial of humanitarian assistance.”
Whittall also confirmed that the WFP’s stockpiles in Gaza are exhausted and said “there are no meaningful food distributions currently happening in” the Strip.
He warned that Gaza is on the verge of “full-scale famine conditions” but said such a declaration will need to be based on evidence. OCHA will be working with other organisations to determine whether the hunger crisis in Gaza constitutes a famine, he added. – Agencies
