Israeli forces have killed hundreds of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in the past two days, bringing the total number of people killed in the territory to more than 20,000, says the Gaza Health Ministry.
The Gaza ministry said on Friday that 390 Palestinians have been killed and 734 injured in Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza since Wednesday.
The latest fatalities have brought the death toll to at least 20,057 people on Friday. At least 8,000 children and 6,200 women are among those killed.
According to the United Nation’s child agency, UNICEF, Gaza is now the “most dangerous place in the world to be a child.”
“Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school, have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them,” said Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s regional director for West Asia East and North Africa.
On average, nearly 300 people have been killed each day since Israel started its bombardment of the territory on Oct. 7, excluding the seven-day ceasefire, data from Gaza’s health ministry shows.
Meanwhile, doctors in Gaza say the death toll is likely to be significantly higher as it does not include bodies buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings or those not taken to hospitals.
Prof Michael Spagat, who specializes in examining death tolls in conflicts around the world says the pace of killing in Israel’s war on Gaza has been “exceptionally high.”
“Within the series of Gaza wars stretching back to 2008, the current one is unprecedented both for the number of people killed and for the indiscriminateness of the killing.”
In addition to the dead, Gaza’s health ministry said, more than 53,300 people have been wounded in Gaza since Israel began its brutal war on Palestinians.
The regime waged the devastating war on Gaza after Hamas, the Palestinian resistance movement, carried out the Al-Aqsa Storm Operation against occupied territories in response to its decades-long violence against Palestinians.
Ever since, the regime has dropped more than 29,000 bombs on Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on earth.
