Gaza, Oct 9 (EFE).- The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 42,000 following a year of ongoing Israeli military operations across the besieged Strip, Palestinian health officials said on Wednesday.
“The Israeli occupation committed three massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, causing 45 martyrs and 130 injuries in the last 24 hours,” the Hamas-run Gazan health ministry said in a statement.
The total number of deaths has now reached 42,010, including more than 16,900 children and around 11,500 women, representing 69 percent of the fatalities, the ministry added.
Since the Israeli operation against Hamas began on Oct. 7, 2023, another 97,720 people have been injured.
At least 18 Gazans were killed in Israeli airstrikes targeting residential areas in central and northern Gaza, where at least 400,000 people remain despite Israeli evacuation orders.
Nine members of a family were killed when Israeli fighter jets struck two houses in the Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.
The official Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that three more people, including a child, were killed when Israeli jets bombed a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Additionally, four people died in an airstrike in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, an area the Israeli army has ordered to be evacuated in recent days.
Israeli forces continued their military operations around three major hospitals in northern Gaza, including Kamal Adwan, Al Awda, and the Indonesian hospital. These facilities are currently treating a total of 317 patients, with 80 in intensive care units.
Humanitarian organizations have warned that the new Israeli evacuation orders in northern Gaza are worsening the already dire humanitarian situation in the Strip.
“These forced mass evacuations of homes and the bombing of neighborhoods by Israeli forces are turning the north of Gaza into an unlivable wasteland,” Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said in a statement.
“Israeli forces must urgently halt evacuation orders, ensure the protection of civilians, and allow desperately needed humanitarian supplies to immediately enter the north of Gaza,” the organization added. EFE
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