About 24 Percent of Gazans Killed Are Young
70 Percent of the Injured Are Women and Children
News Desk / The Cradle

(August 12, 2024) — Nearly two percent of the Gaza Strip’s entire population has been killed by Israel during its genocidal war on the strip, according to figures released on 11 August by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).

The bureau said in a statement that Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 39,000 Palestinians. “This constitutes around 1.8 percent of the total population in the territory,” PCBS said.

According to the data, approximately 24 percent of those killed by Israel in Gaza are youths.

The data goes on to show that 34 people have died as a result of the famine that has struck the entirety of the besieged enclave, adding that 3,500 children are at risk of death from malnutrition and shortages of food.

About 70 percent of the wounded in Gaza are women and children, PCBS revealed. It adds that 10,000 people are missing and that around two million people have been displaced.

Between 7 October and late June, Washington was behind the delivery of nearly 30,000 bombs to Israel, which have been used without restriction in its war on the strip.

Last week, the US green-lighted a $3.5 billion weapons package to Israel.

The death toll in Gaza has risen to 39,897 people, with 91,152 injured, according to medical sources cited by WAFA news agency on 12 August.

“Emergency services are still unable to reach many casualties and dead bodies trapped under the rubble or scattered on roads across the war-torn enclave, as Israeli occupation forces continue to obstruct the movement of ambulance and civil defense crews,” the medical sources told WAFA.

The Lancet medical journal cited experts in early July as saying that the death toll could be as high as between 149,000 and 598,000 Palestinian deaths if the war were to end immediately.

The medical journal published a research correspondence between physicians and public health experts on the difficulty of accounting for the number of those killed by Israel’s war on Gaza, highlighting that both direct and indirect deaths should be considered.

Meanwhile, counting the dead and injured has become increasingly difficult for the Palestinian Health Ministry as the war drags on. The ministry traditionally relies on data from hospital officials in the besieged enclave, who receive the injured and bodies of the dead.

However, Israeli bombing has destroyed many of Gaza’s hospitals and brought its entire health system to the brink of collapse.

At least 100 Palestinians were killed on 10 August in a massacre committed by Israeli forces in Gaza City’s Al-Tabi’in school. Al Mayadeen’s correspondent in Gaza reported the difficulty of counting the dead following the massacre, saying on 11 August that “paramedics have counted each 70 kg of remains as one martyr, due to remains being so scattered.”