RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The war in Gaza has killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, health officials in the Hamas-run territory said Friday, a new reflection of the staggering cost of Israel’s military offensive as pressure grows to scale it back.
The figure, amounting to nearly 1% of the territory’s prewar population, is just one measure of the devastation wrought by the conflict that over 11 weeks has displaced nearly 85% of Gaza’s people and leveled wide swaths of the tiny coastal enclave.
More than half a million people in Gaza — a quarter of the population — are starving, according to a report Thursday by the United Nations and other agencies highlighting the crisis caused by Israel’s bombardment and siege on the territory in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
Despite the urgency to address the crisis, a U.N. Security Council vote on aid deliveries and terms for a cease-fire was delayed again late Thursday, after days of high-level negotiations.
The United States, which has veto power, has pushed back against calls for an immediate cease-fire and giving the U.N. sole responsibility for inspecting aid deliveries. Israel, citing security grounds, insists it needs to be able to screen goods entering Gaza.
The U.S. said it would back a revised resolution that calls for “creating the conditions” for a cease-fire, rather than an immediate end to fighting. Other countries support a stronger text and said they would need to consult their capitals before a vote, which is now expected later Friday.
Martin Griffiths, the U.N. humanitarian affairs chief, lamented the world’s inaction.
“That such a brutal conflict has been allowed to continue and for this long — despite the widespread condemnation, the physical and mental toll and the massive destruction — is an indelible stain on our collective conscience,” he wrote in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Despite calls for a cease-fire, Israel has said it would press on until Hamas, the militant group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years, has been destroyed.
The military has said that months of fighting lie ahead in southern Gaza, an area packed with the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, many of whom were ordered to flee combat in the northern half of the territory in earlier stages of the war.
Since then, evacuation orders have pushed displaced civilians into ever-smaller areas of the south as troops focused on the city of Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest. The military said late Thursday that it is sending more ground forces, including combat engineers, to Khan Younis to target Hamas militants above ground and in tunnels.
The air and ground campaign also continued in the north, even as Israel says it is in the final stages of clearing out Hamas militants from there.
Mustafa Abu Taha, a Palestinian farm worker, said ground battles and airstrikes have continued in his hard-hit Gaza City neighborhood of Shijaiyah, adding that many areas have become inaccessible because of massive destruction from airstrikes.
“They are hitting anything moving,” he said of Israeli forces.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said Friday that it has documented 20,057 deaths in the fighting. It does not differentiate between combatant and civilian deaths. It previously said that roughly two-thirds of the dead were women or minors. It said 53,320 Palestinians have been wounded.
