One Year of War: Gaza Death Toll Surpasses 41,000

It’s been 365 days of war since the October 7 attacks unleashed a devastating conflict between Israel and Hamas. The war led to the Gaza Strip bearing the brunt of the war’s violence. Since then, the death toll has only increased while humanitarian conditions deteriorate. The fighting has spilled into Lebanon.

Hamas is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist military and sociopolitical movement and a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organisation (FTO). Hamas’s primary base of action and support is in the Gaza Strip, which it has controlled since 2007.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched the “Al-Aqsa Flood” offensive, firing around 5,000 rockets at southern Israel. This resulted in at least 1,189 deaths. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared that “the country is at war.”

On October 27, 2023, Israel launched a ground offensive in Gaza. By December, the United Nations reported over 20,000 deaths in Gaza. The UN warned of imminent famine in Gaza, while the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts. 

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza reported that as of October 6, 2024, at least 41,870 people have been killed in the nearly year-long war between Israel and Palestinian militants.

Prior to the war, 36 hospitals were functioning in Gaza, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

As of August this year, 19 hospitals have stopped functioning, and the remaining 17 are partially functioning, the WHO reported. There are currently no fully functioning hospitals, according to the Global Health Agency.