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What new research reveals about Gaza’s real death toll — and why it’s far higher than official figures

Update What new research reveals about Gaza’s real death toll — and why it’s far higher than official figures
A Palestinian woman reacts as a man carries an injured child pulled from the rubble of the Shaheen family home that was targeted in an Israeli strike in the Saftawi neighborhood, Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on June 9, 2025. (AFP)
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Updated 05 July 2025

What new research reveals about Gaza’s real death toll — and why it’s far higher than official figures

What new research reveals about Gaza’s real death toll — and why it’s far higher than official figures
  • Israel claims Gaza’s health ministry inflates civilian deaths, but a new survey suggests it may be undercounting them
  • Independent researchers estimate 83,740 people have died in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023 — far more than official reports

LONDON: Since October 2023, Israel has been waging two parallel wars in Gaza: One, to destroy Hamas and rescue its hostages; the other, a propaganda campaign designed to discredit the tally of civilian fatalities issued by the Gaza Ministry of Health.

However, as new independent research suggests, far from exaggerating the number of deaths since Israel began its retaliation for the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, the Gaza Ministry of Health appears to have been significantly underestimating them.

According to the latest tally from the Ministry of Health, the total number of Palestinians killed since the war began is now approaching 55,000, with a further 126,000 injured.




A Palestinian man carries a child pulled from the rubble of the Shaheen family home that was targetted in an Israeli strike in the Saftawi neighborhood, Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on June 9, 2025. (AFP)

A paper published by a team of researchers in the US, UK, Norway and Belgium, working in collaboration with the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Gaza, shows the death toll is likely far higher.

As of January 5 this year, it found the total number of violent deaths over the course of the conflict had already reached 75,200.

This figure, derived independently of the Ministry of Health, is based on an exhaustive household survey, which revealed another disturbing statistic about the war in Gaza.

In addition to the 75,200 violent deaths, the survey highlighted a further 8,540 non-violent deaths caused by indirect factors, including disease, hunger, and loss of access to medical treatment and medication.




Palestinian men, wounded in gunfire as people were receiving humanitarian aid in Rafah, arrive for treatment at congested Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 3, 2025. (AFP)

That brings the total number of deaths resulting from the war in Gaza since October 2023 to 83,740.

“Our estimate for the number of violent deaths far exceeds the figures from the Ministry of Health,” said Michael Spagat, a professor of economics at Royal Holloway College, University of London, the lead author of the study and chairman of the board of trustees of the UK charity Every Casualty Counts.

“The implication of this is that the ministry has not been exaggerating the number of violent deaths.”

IN NUMBERS

75,200 Violent deaths resulting from the war in Gaza.

8,540 Non-violent deaths caused by indirect factors.

83,740 Total number of deaths since October 2023.

(Source: Gaza Mortality Survey)

The ministry has also been accused of falsifying the number of children killed in Israeli attacks. But “the demographics of the ministry’s figures seem to be about right,” said Spagat.

“The proportion of women, elderly, and children among the dead in its figures is consistent with what we found.”

The new research estimates that 56 percent of those killed between October 2023 and January this year — 42,200 of the total 75,200 victims — were either women, children, or those aged over 65.





Palestinian civil defense first responders and other people inspect the remains of a burnt-down classroom following an Israeli strike at the UNRWA's Osama bin Zaid school in the Saftawi district of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on June 27, 2025. (AFP)

More than half of these (22,800) were children under the age of 18, meaning that almost one in three of those killed in Gaza up to January this year was a child.

The Gaza Mortality Survey, which in line with standard academic procedure received ethical pre-approval from the University of London and obtained informed consent from each respondent, was conducted between Dec. 30, 2024, and Jan. 5, 2025.

Ten two-person teams from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, tracked by GPS and real-time monitoring, conducted face-to-face questionnaire-based interviews, which were recorded on tablets and phones, and uploaded data instantly to a secure central server.

The survey teams visited a sample of 2,000 households, representative of prewar Gaza, and collected information about the “vital status” of 9,729 household members and their newborn children ­­— including whether they were alive or dead and, if dead, how they had died.

The survey, said Spagat, “would have been impossible without the support of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.




Economics professor Michael Spagat of Royal Holloway College, University of London. (Supplied)

“First of all, we would not have been let into Gaza, but our partner was already there. They have experienced survey researchers in Gaza, and they were the ones who conducted the interviews.

“Also crucial was that this organization has been tracking population movements since the war began. If we were doing a survey in Gaza under stable conditions, we would have a list of where people are, based on the last census. But there has been so much displacement the census-based list was of limited value.”

Instead, because it has been tracking population movements throughout the war, the PCPSR was able to identify 200 sample sites sheltering internally displaced people which reflected the distribution of pre-2023 populations, including in the now inaccessible areas of northern Gaza, Gaza City, and Rafah.





Palestinian civil defense first responders and other people inspect the remains of a burnt-down classroom following an Israeli strike at the UNRWA's Osama bin Zaid school in the Saftawi district of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on June 27, 2025. (AFP)

As with all such research, all the numbers come with a cautionary “confidence interval” — a margin of error that shows the possible range of figures, allowing for under- and overestimation. For the total number of violent deaths estimated by the survey, this gives a range of between 63,600 and 86,800.

“Even the lowest figure is a big number, and about 16,000 above the comparable Ministry of Health figure at the time of the survey,” said Spagat.

“We have tried to draw conclusions that we are quite confident won’t get overturned by further research, and one of our conclusions is that the Ministry of Health is not capturing all of the deaths in Gaza and that there is a substantial degree of undercount there.”

He added: “Our estimate for the number of children killed (22,800) is shockingly high, and well above the Ministry of Health figure.”




A Health Ministry rescue team is seen at work in the Zarqa neighborhood in northern Gaza City following an Israeli strike on October 26, 2024. (AFP/File)

Taking into account the survey’s confidence interval, the number of child deaths could range from a low of 16,700 to as many as 28,800. And at either end of that scale, said Spagat, “that is an awful lot of children.”

It is, he said, “possible that the true number of total violent deaths is even below the bottom of our confidence interval, but it’s extremely unlikely to be so far below it that it would overturn our conclusion that the Ministry of Health is not capturing all of the deaths.”

He is anxious that the survey’s conclusions should in no way be seen as a criticism of the Ministry of Health, “which has had a lot on its plate.”

In fact, although the ministry’s tally is not fully comprehensive — it has, for instance, yet to compile or release figures for non-violent war-related deaths, which this survey has revealed for the first time — Spagat said its work should be highly commended.




A man reacts as others gather to watch the burial of some of the 88 bodies in a mass grave in Khan Yunis on September 26, 2024. The bodies were recovered after Israeli strikes on civilian homes. (AFP/File)

Despite the constant criticism by Israel and its supporters, the work it is doing, under extreme conditions, “is exceptionally transparent,” he said.

“For each person they’re saying is dead, they’re listing a name and they’re listing a national ID number, a sex, and age.”

The first list of the dead was released by the ministry in October last year, in response to accusations that it was making up the numbers killed by Israel.

One factor that has been widely overlooked by critics of the ministry’s figures is the significance of the ID numbers.




Based on 2,000 household interviews, researchers say many deaths in Gaza have gone uncounted due to displacement. (AFP)

“It’s the Israelis who maintain the population register for the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, so at a minimum, they can take that list and they can check to verify that everyone listed on it is a real person,” said Spagat.

“They must have done some checking like this, and I’ve got to believe that if the Ministry of Health was just making up names Israel would have made that known.”

Ultimately, Spagat believes, the lists being compiled by Gaza’s Ministry of Health “will serve as a memorial for the people who are killed in a way that just recording a number can’t. By listing people individually, you are recording some semblance of who they were as human beings.”

The model for this, he said, was the Kosovo Memory Book, an exhaustive record of all those killed, missing, or disappeared in the fighting between 1998 and 2000, compiled by the Humanitarian Law Center in Kosovo.




A view of the wall plaques at a memorial dedicated to the victims of the Racak massacre, in the village of Racak, Kosovo. (AFP)

This record, say its authors, “calls everyone to pause in front of it, to read each name and find out who these people were and how they died. It urges people to remember people.”

In time, it adds, “when the data on the fate of those who are still missing are finally obtained … the Kosovo Memory Book will have become the most reliable witness to our recent past.”

When peace finally comes to Gaza, said Spagat, “I hope there will be funding for research on this scale (based) on the really good foundations being laid by the Ministry of Health.”


Why treating Palestine Action supporters as terrorists alarms UK civil rights defenders

Why treating Palestine Action supporters as terrorists alarms UK civil rights defenders
Updated 9 min 41 sec ago

Why treating Palestine Action supporters as terrorists alarms UK civil rights defenders

Why treating Palestine Action supporters as terrorists alarms UK civil rights defenders
  • Hundreds of British citizens have been arrested for peacefully protesting in support of Palestine Action, deemed a terrorist organization
  • The group targets UK arms companies supplying the Israeli military, but the government has accused it of violence and intimidation

LONDON: Eighty-year-old Deborah Hinton, a retired English magistrate, does not look like most people’s idea of a terrorist.

But she is currently on bail awaiting trial under the UK’s Terrorism Act for supporting a proscribed terrorist organization. If convicted, she faces a possible sentence of up to 14 years in jail.

Hinton is just one of hundreds of British people from all walks of life who have taken to the streets in peaceful protest against what they see as their government’s cynical and disproportionate decision to label the activist group Palestine Action as a terror organization.

She is not even the oldest protester scooped up by police. In July, Sue Parfitt, an 83-year-old retired vicar, was arrested in London.

Caption

Palestine Action, founded in 2020, is a direct-action organization committed to “non-violent yet disruptive” targeting of British arms companies it accuses of supporting the Israeli military.

On Aug. 9, during a protest in support of the organization, 532 people were arrested in central London. Of those, 65 percent were over the age of 50, including 147 between the ages of 60 and 69, almost 100 between 70 and 79, and 15 between 80 and 89.

That evening, TV news channels broadcast extraordinary footage of embarrassed-looking Metropolitan Police officers handcuffing dozens of old age pensioners and taking them into custody. Their alleged crime was protesting peacefully while carrying signs proclaiming: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

Protesters sit with placards supporting of Palestine Action at a "Lift The Ban" demonstration in support of the proscribed group Palestine Action, calling for the recently imposed ban to be lifted, in Parliament Square, central London, on August 9, 2025. (AFP)

Anyone in the UK who even posts a message on social media in support of the group now risks arrest. On Aug. 17, Irish novelist Sally Rooney joined the clamor of voices raised in protest against the “alarming attack on free speech.” She pledged to “go on supporting Palestine Action and direct action against genocide,” and to provide funding for the group through royalties from her book.

She might now face arrest, a situation that highlights the moral and legal quagmire into which the British government has stumbled over Gaza.

A protester is carried away by police officers at a "Lift The Ban" demonstration in support of the proscribed group Palestine Action, calling for the recently imposed ban to be lifted, in Parliament Square, central London, on August 9, 2025. (AFP)

The protesters arrested so far “have tended to be people in the later stages of their life,” said Katie McFadden, a senior associate with the law firm Hodge Jones and Allen, which is representing many of those arrested.

“They are retired. They don’t have to worry about things like losing their jobs, or whether a bank will approve them for a mortgage if they’ve been deemed a terrorist. And they see the danger of society moving in this direction and they really want to stand up to protect freedom of speech.”

What they are doing, she added, “is incredibly brave. What they are going through is terrifying, and yet they are willing to take this action because they believe it’s the right thing to do, to protect the rights of all of us.”

Police officers detain a protester during a rally organised by Defend Our Juries, challenging the British government's proscription of "Palestine Action" under anti-terrorism laws, in Parliament Square, in London, Britain, August 9, 2025. (REUTERS)

Alongside other members of the specialist protests team from her law firm, McFadden has been on hand to observe the arrests and processing of several clients. The police officers, she said, “look mortified, and frankly they should be because this isn’t why they went into this job, to arrest someone who looks like their grandmother.”

Members of Palestine Action, she said, could have been prosecuted for their actions under normal criminal law.

“But to designate them as terrorists is a step way too far and that has resulted in the extraordinary scenes that we’ve seen of people being arrested and carried and dragged away by the police simply for holding a sign,” she added.

Palestine Action, responsible for a series of direct action activities intended to highlight Britain’s role in the war in Gaza, was banned in July after some of its members broke into a Royal Air Force base and sprayed red paint on two transport aircraft. The designation of the group as a terrorist organization also means that anyone who expresses support for it in public can be charged under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act.

RAF aircraft that the activists sprayed with red paint at RAF Brize Norton on June 20. (Supplied)

The ban drew widespread criticism, even from the UN. On July 25, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, said the action taken by the UK government “misuses the gravity and impact of terrorism to expand it beyond those clear boundaries, to encompass further conduct that is already criminal under the law.”

The decision, he added, “appears disproportionate and unnecessary” and is “an impermissible restriction (on) freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association … at odds with the UK’s obligations under international human rights law.”

The British government justified the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organization primarily on the grounds that the group had orchestrated and carried out aggressive and intimidatory attacks against businesses, institutions and members of the public which, according to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, crossed the legal thresholds set out in the Terrorism Act 2000.

This aerial view shows a war devastated neighbourhood in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on April 2, 2025.

“Anyone who wants to protest against the catastrophic humanitarian situation and crimes against humanity in Gaza, to oppose Israel’s military offensive, or to criticize the actions of any and every government, including our own, has the freedom to do so,” Cooper said in an op-ed for The Observer newspaper on Aug. 17.

“The recent proscription of the group Palestine Action does not prevent those protests, and to claim otherwise is nonsense.

“That proscription concerns one specific organization alone — a group that has conducted an escalating campaign involving not just sustained criminal damage, including to Britain’s national security infrastructure, but also intimidation, violence, weapons, and serious injuries to individuals.”

Protesters hold a banner during a protest in support of pro-Palestinian group Palestine Action, in Trafalgar Square, central London, on June 23, 2025, as British government is expected to announce the group's ban.

Cooper said she was unable to provide specific details of this so as to avoid prejudicing forthcoming criminal trials.

According to Declassified UK, an investigative media organization that focuses on the effects of Britain’s military activities on human rights, there is evidence to suggest that the decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organization might have been the result of lobbying by Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms company whose facilities in the UK have been targeted by the group.

Through Freedom of Information applications, Declassified UK discovered that three senior representatives of the company met Home Office officials in December 2024, but no details of their discussions have been made public.

The meeting followed an attack on an Elbit Systems facility in Filton, near Bristol, on Aug. 6 last year when, even before Palestine Action was proscribed, 24 members of the group were arrested and detained under the Terrorism Act.

The group claimed the company was supplying the Israeli military with drones and other equipment being used against civilians in Gaza, an allegation the firm denied.

On Aug. 11, Bezhalel Machlis, the president and CEO of Elbit Systems in Israel, announced the company had won two new contracts, worth $260 million, for the supply of unspecified “advanced airborne munitions” to Israel’s Ministry of Defense. Machlis, a former artillery officer with the Israel Defense Forces, is also a director of the company’s UK operation.

Meanwhile, the Filton 24, as the arrested protesters became known, have been in custody for an entire year, denied bail and held without trial.

A protester is carried away by police officers at a demonstration in support of the proscribed group Palestine Action. (AFP)

Zoe Rogers, who was 20 when she was arrested, was interrogated by counterterrorism police for days and still does not have a trial date, having pleaded not guilty to charges of violent disorder, criminal damage and aggravated burglary.

During her time in a high-security prison in Surrey she wrote a poem, which her mother, a devout Christian, shared with the media last week.

“When they ask why,” part of it read, “I tell them about the children … I tell them about the boy found carrying his brother’s body inside his bloody backpack.

“I tell them about the girl whose hanging corpse ended at the knees. I tell them about the father holding up his headless toddler.

“It was love, not hate, that called me.”

It seems likely that Zoe, and more than 700 other Britons arrested so far for supporting Palestine Action, will soon be joined by more. Another protest is planned for Sept. 6, at which organizers hope at least 1,000 people will defy the law.

A protester gestures through the window of a police van as she and others are driven away to jail for taking part in a demonstration in Parliament Square, London, on July 19, 2025, in support of the proscribed group Palestine Action. (AFP)

There is no doubt that many British companies are supporting Israel’s military operations in Gaza. In July 2024, the British government suspended about 30 licenses for the export of arms to Israel because of a “clear risk” that the weaponry “might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.”

But the Campaign Against Arms Trade later discovered that licenses for the export of parts for F-35 fighter jets, “currently being used in the bombardment of Gaza,” were exempt from the ban.

Through Freedom of Information requests, it found that the 15 percent of F-35 components made in Britain had earned UK companies at least £360 million ($485 million) since 2016, and that scores of UK-based companies were profiting from the sale of the parts and other military exports to Israel.

Since April 2015, about 1,331 licenses have been issued to 174 British companies for military exports to Israel worth more than £630 million, along with 73 unspecified “open” licenses, the value of which is unknown.

“There’s a huge lack of transparency and the government’s basically lying about what’s going on,” said Emily Apple, the media coordinator for CAAT.

Elbit Systems UK Ltd., one of the companies most targeted by Palestine Action, tops the list of British arms exporters to Israel. The company, and UAV Tactical Systems Ltd., a joint drone-manufacturing operation with a French arms company, were awarded 28 military export licenses for Israel between 2021 and the end of last year.

In May, the UK government issued a joint statement with France and Canada condemning Israel’s response to the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, as “wholly disproportionate” and bemoaning the “intolerable … level of human suffering in Gaza.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy recently said the UK would officially recognize a Palestinian state during the UN General Assembly in September unless Israel acts to end the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza.

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Keir Starmer and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy (L) attend a UN Security Council meeting on the theme of "Leadership for Peace" at the United Nations headquarters in New York City on September 25, 2024.

Now, the British government is in the awkward position of condemning Israel’s military operations in Gaza while continuing to supply it with hardware used to inflict the suffering there, and locking up its own citizens who protest against this perceived hypocrisy.

As one poster on social media platform X remarked after the mass arrests in London on Aug. 9: “Who knew that cardboard and marker pens were key instruments of terrorism? I thought it was Elbit drones and F-35s.”

Human rights groups and lawyers have condemned the mass arrests as a betrayal of fundamental British values, including the right to free speech.

“Peaceful protest is a fundamental right,” said Sacha Deshmukh, the CEO of Amnesty International UK, on the day of the latest arrests.

Supporters of the proscribed group Palestine Action demonstrated in August in London’s Parliament Square. (Getty Images)

“People are understandably outraged by the ongoing genocide being committed in Gaza and are entitled under international human rights law to express their horror.

“The protesters in Parliament Square were not inciting violence and it is entirely disproportionate to the point of absurdity to be treating them as terrorists.”

In a statement to Arab News, Peter Leary, deputy director of the London-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said: “Shamefully, instead of taking any meaningful action to end its complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the British government seems determined to silence those speaking out for Palestinian rights.

“Rather than wasting public resources and attacking fundamental democratic freedoms, the government should immediately end all arms sales to Israel and impose wide-ranging sanctions to pressure Israel to end the genocide.”
 

 


Netanyahu rival offers political truce to help secure Gaza hostage deal

Netanyahu rival offers political truce to help secure Gaza hostage deal
Updated 24 August 2025

Netanyahu rival offers political truce to help secure Gaza hostage deal

Netanyahu rival offers political truce to help secure Gaza hostage deal
  • Benny Gantz proposed a temporary coalition that would side-step far-right parties and strike a hostage release deal
  • The former defense ministerwas a rival of Netanyahu who nonetheless joined his government in the early days of the war
  • He called on fellow opposition party leaders Yair Lapid and Avigdor Lieberman to also consider the offer

TEL AVIV: Israeli former defense minister Benny Gantz on Saturday called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to forge a unity government along with members of the opposition in a bid to help release the hostages held in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s coalition government depends on support from far-right members who oppose ending the war and making any deal with Palestinian group Hamas, whose October 2023 attack on Israel sparked the Gaza war.
Gantz, a rival of Netanyahu who nonetheless joined his government in the early days of the war, proposed a temporary coalition that would side-step far-right parties and strike a hostage release deal.
“I am here on behalf of the hostages who have no voice. I am here for the soldiers who are crying out, and whom no one in this government is listening to,” Gantz told a televised press conference.
“The duty of our state is first and foremost to save the lives of Jews and all citizens,” added Gantz, calling on fellow opposition party leaders Yair Lapid and Avigdor Lieberman to also consider the offer.
Both opposition chief Lapid and Lieberman have previously rejected joining any Netanyahu-led government.
Netanyahu’s coalition faces a risk of collapse after the parliament’s summer recess ends, following the loss of support from ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties over legislation seeking to draft students of religious seminaries into the military.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a far-right member of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition who could be sidelined if Gantz’s plan succeeds, was quick to dismiss it.
“Right-wing voters chose a right-wing policy — not Gantz’s policy, not a centrist government, not surrender deals with Hamas, but yes to absolute victory,” Ben Gvir said in a statement.
The government has faced increasing domestic pressure to secure an end to the war in Gaza, with mass protests calling for a deal that would see the hostages released.
Out of 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s 2023 attack, 49 are still held in Gaza including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
Palestinian militants also hold the remains of an Israeli soldier killed in a 2014 war.
The demonstrations in Israel have intensified since Netanyahu’s security cabinet approved plans earlier this month to expand the offensive in Gaza and seize the Palestinian territory’s largest city.
The move has sparked fears that the onslaught would exacerbate already dire conditions on the ground after more than 22 months of war.


Jordanian field hospital in Gaza performs life-saving surgery on Palestinian teenager

Jordanian field hospital in Gaza performs life-saving surgery on Palestinian teenager
Updated 23 August 2025

Jordanian field hospital in Gaza performs life-saving surgery on Palestinian teenager

Jordanian field hospital in Gaza performs life-saving surgery on Palestinian teenager
  • The attending neurosurgeon said the patient’s injury was caused by shrapnel that penetrated the skull

AMMAN: Doctors at the Jordanian Field Hospital South Gaza/7 successfully performed a complex surgery on a 19-year-old patient who sustained a head injury and was suffering from a severe subdural hemorrhage, it was revealed on Saturday.

The hospital’s force commander said on Saturday that the operation came in line with royal directives to deliver the “best possible medical and humanitarian services” to people in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

He praised the efforts of the hospital’s specialized and skilled medical staff in carrying out the delicate procedure, the Jordan News Agency reported.

According to the hospital director, the successful surgery was led by a team specializing in brain and nerve surgery, supported by anesthesiology experts.

The attending neurosurgeon said the patient’s injury was caused by shrapnel that penetrated the skull, leading to a life-threatening hemorrhage.

“The surgery took five hours, during which the skull was opened, the hemorrhage drained, and cerebral clots removed,” he explained, noting that the swift intervention was critical in saving the patient’s life and preventing serious complications.

The patient was placed under close observation in intensive care before being discharged in stable condition.

The patient’s family thanked King Abdullah II of Jordan and commended the field hospital’s staff for their tireless efforts to mitigate the humanitarian impact of the conflict on Gaza’s population, JNA added.


Doctors in Gaza say patients’ protruding ribs, bony limbs offer evidence of malnutrition

Smoke rises following an Israeli strike, in Gaza City, August 23, 2025. (REUTERS)
Smoke rises following an Israeli strike, in Gaza City, August 23, 2025. (REUTERS)
Updated 23 August 2025

Doctors in Gaza say patients’ protruding ribs, bony limbs offer evidence of malnutrition

Smoke rises following an Israeli strike, in Gaza City, August 23, 2025. (REUTERS)
  • There are no protein sources, only plant-based protein from legumes. Meat and chicken are not available. Dairy products are not available, and fruits are also unavailable

GAZA CITY: Not long after Texas surgeon Mohammed Adeel Khaleel arrived at a Gaza City hospital in early August, a 17-year-old was brought in with gunshot wounds to both legs and one hand, sustained when he went to collect food at an aid site.
In the emergency room, Khaleel said he noted the ribs protruding from the teen’s emaciated torso, an indication of severe malnutrition. 
When doctors at Al-Ahli Hospital stabilized the patient, he raised his heavily bandaged hand and pointed to his empty mouth, Khaleel said.
“The level of hunger is really what’s heartbreaking. You know, we saw malnutrition before, back in November, already starting to happen. But now the level is just, it’s beyond imagination,” Khaleel, a spinal surgeon on his third volunteer stint in Gaza, said in an interview.
On Friday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, the leading authority on global hunger crises, said for the first time that parts of Gaza are in famine and warned that it is spreading. 
For months, UN agencies, aid groups, and experts had warned that Israel’s blockade and ongoing offensive were pushing the territory to the brink.
In the 24 hours following the famine announcement, eight people in Gaza died of malnutrition-related causes, bringing the overall toll of such deaths during the war to 281, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is part of the government and staffed by medical professionals. 
A US medical nonprofit working in Gaza says one in six children under 5 is affected by acute malnutrition.
Israel rejected the famine announcement, calling it an “outright lie” and pointing to its recent efforts to allow in more food after it eased a complete 2½ month blockade in May. 
It has accused Hamas of siphoning off aid — allegations disputed by the United Nations, which says Israeli restrictions and a breakdown of law and order make it extremely difficult to deliver food to the most vulnerable.
Khaleel, who spoke to The Associated Press ahead of the announcement, said the evidence of deprivation was already clear.
“Just the degree of weight loss, post-operative complications, and starvation that we’re seeing. That would not surprise me at all if it were called famine,” said Khaleel, who traveled to Gaza as an independent volunteer via the World Health Organization.
At Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital earlier in the week, nutrition director Dr. Mohammad Kuheil led an AP journalist to the bedside of a thin-limbed girl. 
Aya Sbeteh, 15, was wounded in an airstrike. But her recovery has been set back by weakness from lack of food, which her family says has reduced her weight by more than a third.
“All we have are grains like lentils, sometimes,” said her father, Yousef Sbeteh, 44. 
“Even flour is unaffordable.”
Another patient, Karam Akoumeh, lay with sunken cheeks, his thin skin stretched like plastic wrap across his rib cage. 
His intestines were seriously damaged when he was shot while going out to collect flour, his family said, compromising his digestive system.
Now he is one of 20 people at Shifa brought in for abdominal wounds and increasingly malnourished because of a shortage of intravenous nutritional supplements, the doctor said.
Akoumeh’s father, Atef, said that the lack of supplements compounded the hunger, which reduced Karam’s weight from 62 kg to just 35 kg.
“I checked throughout all Gaza’s hospitals for it (the supplements), but I have not found any,” he said.
Israeli officials have pointed out that some of those said to have died from malnutrition had preexisting conditions. 
But doctors and other experts say that is to be expected, as famine first preys on the most vulnerable, including babies and small children.
Outside the hospital, the shortage of nutrients is equally dire, doctors and civilians say.
“There are no protein sources, only plant-based protein from legumes. Meat and chicken are not available. Dairy products are not available, and fruits are also unavailable,” said Kuheil, the doctor in charge of nutrition at Shifa.
In Gaza City on Friday, Palestinians displaced from elsewhere recounted a desperate search for food.
“We’re starving. We eat once a day. Will we be hungrier than we are now? There’s nothing left,” said Dalia Shamali, whose family has been repeatedly displaced from their home in nearby Shijaiyah.
She said they spent most of their money over the last two years moving from one part of Gaza to another as the Israeli military issued evacuation orders. 
With Israel allowing more food in recently, the price of flour and other food items has been dropping, but the family still can’t afford them, Shamali said.
In its announcement on Friday, the IPC said famine in Gaza City is likely to spread across the territory without a ceasefire and a flood of humanitarian aid.
Some of the IPC’s conclusions were echoed in a report by a group that organizes medical missions to Gaza, which described a “catastrophic rise in severe malnutrition” among children and pregnant women.
One in every six children in Gaza under 5 is now affected by acute malnutrition, said the report by US nonprofit MedGlobal, based on observations by its staff in four of Gaza’s five governorates. 
The group warned that all young children in Gaza are at risk of starving without intervention.
Khaleel, the Texas doctor, said he would leave it to others with more expertise to measure exactly what constitutes famine.
But he knows what he saw in three weeks of treating patients in Gaza, most of the time at the hospital in Gaza City. 
Again and again, medical workers cut open patients’ clothing to treat injuries, revealing a loss of muscle and fat caused by hunger that left skin stretched tight over protruding bones.
“These patients, a number of them that we’re seeing, are just exposed ribs, severely skinny extremities,” he said. 
“And you know that they’re just not getting calories in.”

 


‘Far too late’: Palestinians despair after UN declares famine in Gaza

‘Far too late’: Palestinians despair after UN declares famine in Gaza
Updated 23 August 2025

‘Far too late’: Palestinians despair after UN declares famine in Gaza

‘Far too late’: Palestinians despair after UN declares famine in Gaza
  • UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini urges Israeli government to admit its famine role in Palestinian enclave

GAZAI CITY: Desperate Palestinians clutching pots and plastic buckets scrambled for rice at a charity kitchen in Gaza City on Saturday, a day after the UN declared a famine in the war-battered territory.

AFP footage from Gaza’s largest city, which Israel plans to seize as part of an expanded military offensive, showed women and young children among the chaotic jostle of dozens clamoring and shouting for food.
One young boy used his hands to scrape a few leftover grains from the inside of a cooking vat.
“We have no home left, no food, no income ... so we are forced to turn to charity kitchens, but they do not satisfy our hunger,” said Yousef Hamad, 58, who was displaced from the northern city of Beit Hanoun.
Further south, at a charity kitchen in Deir Al-Balah, 34-year-old Umm Mohammed said the UN’s declaration of a famine had come “far too late.”
The children are “staggering from dizziness, unable to wake up because of the lack of food and water,” she said.
The UN officially declared a famine in Gaza on Friday, blaming the “systematic obstruction” of aid by Israel during more than 22 months of war.
The Rome-based Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative reported that famine was affecting around 500,000 people in the Gaza governorate, which encompasses about one-fifth of the Palestinian territory, including Gaza City.
On Saturday, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said it was “time for the government of Israel to stop denying the famine it has created in Gaza.”
“All of those who have influence must use it with determination & a sense of moral duty,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini posted on X.
The IPC projected that the famine would expand to Deir Al-Balah and Khan Younis governorates by the end of September, covering around two-thirds of Gaza.
Israel, meanwhile, kept up its bombardment of the Palestinian territory, with news footage showing heavy smoke billowing above the Zeitoun district of Gaza City as Palestinians picked through the wreckage of buildings.
The spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense agency, Mahmoud Bassal, called the situation in the Sabra and Zeitoun neighborhoods “absolutely catastrophic,” describing the “complete leveling of entire residential blocks.”
“We are trapped here, living in fear, with nowhere to go. There’s no safety anywhere in Gaza. Movement now leads to death,” said Ahmad Jundiyeh, 35, who was displaced to the northern outskirts of Zeitoun.
“We constantly hear the sound of bombing ... we hear fighter jets, artillery shelling, and even drone explosions,” he said by telephone.
“We’re extremely afraid — it feels like the end is near.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed on Friday to destroy Gaza City if Hamas did not agree to disarm, release all remaining hostages in the territory, and end the war on Israel’s terms.