Death tolls in Gaza have passed 30,000
The Gaza Health Ministry and a Campaign to Save Children and Families in the Ghettosh Refugion. Eman Abusaeid, the Head of Gaza, told NPR
DUBAI AND RAMALLAH, West Bank — Eman Abusaeid struggled to keep her children safe in Gaza, as Israeli bombs targeted her neighborhood in the days after Oct. 7, when Hamas militants stormed into Israel.
“We woke up with the dust bombing on our faces and bodies, and smelling of gunpowder and dirt. “My kids cry and shout all day because of the F16 war airplanes,” she said in a call with NPR. We are trying to escape, but we do not know where to go.
The toll of dead does not say how many are militant. Israel says its forces have killed more than 10,000 fighters in Gaza, but has not provided evidence or detailed information to back up its estimate.
Thousands remain unaccounted for — either missing under the rubble, buried hastily in side streets or decomposing in areas that can’t be safely reached.
In the early days of the war, as the wounded and dead streamed into hospitals, Gaza’s health ministry kept a detailed daily count of the number of people killed. Public and private hospitals were recording into an electronic database the names, ages, genders and ID numbers of the dead.
The Gaza’s health ministry published a database of victims’ names after President Biden said that he had “no confidence” in the figures they reported.
The health ministry’s figures rely mostly on hospital emergency rooms, which record information about patients who come in. Hospitals tally how many people die in their hallways and operating rooms each day.
According to the ministry, more than 17,000 Palestinian deaths have been recorded this way, with the victim’s name and other information recorded in the electronic database unless the body cannot be identified, in which case it is indicated as such.
Other breaks in the system have occurred. The largest hospital in Gaza was struck by Israeli forces in November, and the military said it was being used by Hamas. People at the hospital were burying bodies in shallow graves on its premises, with no staff able to record the deaths as the Israeli raid was closing in and the hospital was besieged.
The director of international cooperation for the health ministry is from the West Bank. In an interview with NPR in late January, he said there is an estimated 10,000 people who are missing and presumed dead under the rubble in Gaza.
On Oct. 31, Israeli warplanes targeted the five-story building the family was in. Abusaeid, 40, was killed. So were her husband and children. In all, 23 members of her family lost their lives in the attack.
Only one person in the apartment survived, a younger sister whose six children were among those killed, according to relatives who confirmed the details.
Palestinians in the midst of the Gazan airstrike: how many people have died in the last 10 years and how many are still alive?
NPR reached out to the Israeli military multiple times, including with coordinates of the building, with questions about why it was bombed, but did not receive a response.
Relatives say Abusaeid’s husband, Iyad, her brother, Mahmoud, her son, Ziyad, and three other children in the family are still missing under the rubble. Their bodies were never recovered.
“We have made it clear that there are people whose names and information can’t be recorded, if they are still under the rubble or have been recovered from under the rubble and buried immediately,” al- Qudra says.
Bozya and doctors in Gaza say the death count published by the health ministry also largely excludes people who have died from a lack of adequate treatment, disease and other impacts from the war, like hunger.
Bozya says a colleague in Gaza told him the only way to really know how many people have died is to count the number of people still alive compared with the population of Gaza before Oct. 7.
For those who’ve lost loved ones in the war, these casualty figures aren’t just numbers. The person represents a life of hard work, aspiration and being loved.
Abusaied’s brother, Mohammed, who lives in the U.K., says his sister Taqwa, who survived the airstrike but lost her six children, is hardly able to speak when he calls her now in southern Gaza.
He misses being able to call his parents in Gaza and share photos of his children in the U.K. over WhatsApp with them. He feels that he won’t be able to see the pictures of his relatives who were killed in the attack.
He says that looking at pictures is painful. “Ten years, I was praying to Allah, you know, to reunite with my family. This will never happen.
Hamas and Israel will continue fighting despite the recent deadly attack on Gaza, including a Palestinian muslim brother in the epsilon
The director-general of the World Health Organization said on Thursday in a post that most of the people who died in Gaza were women and children.
The health ministry said that infants have died of dehydration and malnutrition over the last few days. A physician who was in Gaza in late January told CBS that the people there were dying in a situation that was dire because of the lack of medical supplies.
On Wednesday, Hamas’s political leader said in a televised speech that while the group was open to making a deal with Israel, it was also ready to continue fighting. He called on Palestinians to march to the Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem in March, raising the prospect of fresh clashes with Israeli security forces around a site holy to both Muslims and Jews.
Israel has come under increasing international pressure and even its strongest ally, President Barack Obama, expressed growing impatience with the rising death toll in Gaza. The Israeli leadership insists that they will continue to fight until they eliminate Hamas, which was at the center of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Gaza’s health ministry has released a database of victims’ names after US President Biden said that he had “no confidence” in the figures they reported. Gaza’s health ministry published a database of victims’ names after Biden said he had “no confidence” in the figures they reported. In an interview with NPR, Biden said there is an estimated 10,000 people who are missing and presumed dead.