Over 29,000 Palestinians killed in Israel-Hamas war: Gaza health ministry

Gaza's Health Ministry says more than 29,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

The ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said on Monday that 107 bodies were brought to hospitals in the last 24 hours. That brings the total number of fatalities to 29,092 since the start of the war.

The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its records, but says most of those killed were women and children.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostage. More than 100 captives were released during a weeklong ceasefire in November in exchange for 240 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

Meanwhile, fourteen patients were evacuated from a Gaza hospital that has been raided by Israeli troops, the Gaza health ministry said on Monday, as Israel denied its military operations had stopped the hospital from functioning.

 

The two sides gave conflicting accounts of the situation at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza's second-largest, with Israel denying an assertion by the Gaza ministry's spokesperson that its forces had detained the hospital director.
 

The ministry said the evacuated patients, including five who required kidney dialysis and three intensive care cases, were moved from the hospital to others in southern Gaza thanks to efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO). The ministry later added that 25 medical staff and 136 patients were without electricity, food, water, oxygen or the necessary medical capabilities.
 

A WHO spokesperson gave no immediate comment. On Sunday, the U.N. agency's Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the hospital was no longer functional, that a WHO team had not been allowed in, and that there were still about 200 patients inside of whom 20 needed to be moved urgently. 
 

Nasser Hospital is the latest health facility to become a theatre of war in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, now in its fifth month. Israel says Hamas, the Islamist group that has run Gaza since 2007, uses hospitals for cover, which it denies.
 

The war was triggered by a Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and 253 taken hostage, according to Israel.
 

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has responded with an air and ground assault that according to Gaza's tallies has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians and injured more than 69,000. The war has displaced most of the enclave's 2.3 million people and reduced much of it to rubble.