The Gaza Health Ministry said on Thursday, February 29, that more than 30,000 Palestinians had been murdered since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict about five months ago.
This follows reports from the local hospital that an assault on a crowd of Palestinians waiting for aid in Gaza City killed scores and injured dozens more.
When Israel responded to Hamas' attack on October 7, 2023, with an air, sea, and land operation, its first targets were Gaza City and the remainder of northern Gaza. The area has been devastated due to the prolonged isolation and lack of assistance.
According to relief organizations, the sheer number of people in Gaza makes it practically hard to deploy humanitarian supply convoys. An estimated 2 out of every 3 Palestinians in Gaza are at risk of starvation, according to the United Nations.
Reports of Increased Deaths, Injuries
The chief of the nursing department at Shifa Hospital, Dr. Jadallah Shafai, said that 250 people were injured and roughly 50 were murdered, as reported by The Associated Press. He did not specify the total number of affected individuals.
The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, also said that the facility had received at least ten corpses and 160 persons injured.
According to Fares Afana, the chief of the ambulance service at Kamal Adwan, doctors who arrived at the site saw bodies lying on the ground. Donkey carts were used to transport some of the injured and deceased to hospitals since there were insufficient ambulances, according to him.
The interim director of Al-Awda Hospital, Dr. Mohammad Salha, said that the facility received 90 injured and transported three bodies to Kamal Adwan. He predicted that the death toll would climb.
Salha informed them that Al-Awda is mostly inoperable due to a lack of electricity and the fact that the operating room is now functioning on battery power, with just a few hours remaining.
The Israeli military has said that it is investigating the mentioned reports.
Death Toll Throughout Conflict
The Gaza Health Ministry has not yet released an official death toll from the attack, but they have reported that 30,035 Palestinians have been killed and 70,457 injured throughout the conflict, according to Al Jazeera. The report lists women and children as constituting almost two-thirds of the casualties, although it fails to distinguish between civilians and soldiers in its estimates.
The ministry, which is under the control of the Hamas-run government, keeps meticulous statistics on fatalities. Historically, its war casualty tolls have been quite consistent with those of the UN, other third-party analysts, and even Israel itself.
