More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the territory’s health ministry said yesterday.
Israel’s offensive has also wounded 92,401 people and displaced more than 85 per cent of the population from their homes, the ministry in Gaza said.
The announcement came during yet another push from international mediators to broker a ceasefire in the war, now in its 11th month.
Even as negotiators worked in Qatar, fighting continued in Gaza, with Israeli troops hitting targets in the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis.
Palestinian health officials said at least six Palestinians were killed last night in an Israeli air strike on a house in Jabalia in northern Gaza Strip.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk said the Gaza death toll of more than 40,000 reported by the enclave’s health ministry was a “grim milestone for the world”.
“This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the Israeli Defence Forces to comply with the rules of war,” he said in a statement from Geneva.
Separately, Israel’s military said it had “eliminated” more than 17,000 Palestinian fighters in its Gaza campaign.
In shattered Gaza where the war has driven almost all of its 2.3 million population from their homes, there was a desperate desire for an end to the fighting.
“Enough is enough, we want to get back to our homes in Gaza City, every hour a family is getting killed or a house getting bombed,” said Aya, 30, sheltering with her family in Deir Al Balah in the central part of the Gaza Strip.
“We are hopeful this time. Either it’s this time or never I am afraid,” she told Reuters.
In Tel Aviv, families of some of the hostages protested outside the headquarters of Netanyahu’s Likud party.
“To the negotiating team – if a deal is not signed today or in the coming days at this summit, do not return to Israel. You have no reason to return to Israel without a deal,” said Yotam Cohen, whose brother Nimrod Cohen is a hostage in Gaza.
Israel’s air and ground offensive in Gaza has been one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history.
The offensive likely either damaged or destroyed 59pc of all structures in Gaza by July 3, including 70pc of buildings in north Gaza, according to an analysis of satellite data by Corey Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek, experts in mapping damage during war.
The conflict has sparked fears of a wider regional war, with Lebanon’s Hizbollah and the Israeli military trading fire almost daily over their countries’ border.
More than 500 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, including some 350 Hizbollah members and 50 fighters from other militant groups, with the rest civilians. In Israel, 22 soldiers and 24 civilians have been killed.
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