The Gaza Health Ministry reported today that the death toll from Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip has reached 10,569, of whom 73% are women, children and the elderly. (This figure had risen from 67 to 70% prior to the land invasion.) “The victims include 4,324 children, 2,823 women and 649 elders, while more than 26,000 people were injured,” Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told a press conference in Gaza City. He said, further, that 2,550 people, including 1,350 children, were reported to be trapped under the rubble. “The Israeli aggression has left 193 medics dead and 45 ambulances destroyed,” he added.
According to Al Arabiya, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told Reuters that looking at the number of civilians killed in Gaza, “there is clearly something wrong” with the Israeli military operation. Israel must understand that it is absolutely against its interests, for people to see every day “the terrible image of the dramatic humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people.” Comparing the number of deaths of Gazan children, numbering in the thousands, with the death toll from conflicts around the world that he reports on every year, Guterres said that “every year, the highest number of killings of children by any of the actors in all the conflicts that we witness is the maximum in the hundreds.”
