Gaza death toll passes 25,000

UN condemns ‘unprecedented’ rate of civilian killings as Palestinians report being beaten by Israeli troops in UN school

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More than 25,000 people have now been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its invasion of the enclave in October, the Hamas-run Ministry of Health reported on Sunday.

At least 178 people were killed during the past 24 hours and another 300 wounded, said ministry spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra on Sunday.

A total of 25,105 Palestinians have been killed and 62,681 have been injured since October 7, the ministry said.

The vast majority of those killed in Gaza were civilians, with an estimated 70 per cent women and children.

About 1.1 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are thought to be children.

The UN has repeatedly condemned the “unprecedented” high civilian death toll from the war.

“Israel’s military operations have spread mass destruction and killed civilians on a scale unprecedented during my time as Secretary General,” UN chief Antonio Guterres said on Sunday.

“This is heartbreaking and utterly unacceptable. The Middle East is a tinderbox, we must do all we can to prevent conflict from igniting across the region,” he said at the opening of a summit of the G77+China in the Ugandan capital Kampala.

Mr Guterres’ remarks at the G77+China summit come more than a month after he invoked UN Charter Article 99 over the war, representing some of his strongest condemnation of Israel’s conduct to date.

Article 99 allows the Secretary-General to “bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.”

The US has blocked resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the UN Security Council, but non-binding ceasefire resolutions have been passed in the UN General Assembly.

Israel has rejected calls for a ceasefire and vowed to eliminate the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which prompted the war with a deadly attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 Israelis.

Over the course of the war, the Israeli military has expressed regret for civilian deaths but it accuses Hamas of operating in densely populated areas and using civilians as human shields, a charge the group denies.

A report on Sunday suggested that Israel has made minimal progress in its stated goal of destroying Hamas as a military force.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that only 30 per cent of Hamas’s fighters have been killed since October 7, citing estimates from US intelligence.

Intelligence agencies believe the militant group has enough weapons and fighters to continue battling Israel for months, it added, contradicting Israeli claims it is successfully “eradicating” Hamas in Gaza.

According to the report, the US estimates between 10,500 and 11,700 Hamas fighters have been wounded, much lower than Israel’s figures of 16,000.