More than 20,000 people have died in the Gaza Strip in the war between Israel and Hamas, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Hamas led an attack on Israel on 7 October that killed more than 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities. Israel’s response – an all-out bombardment of Gaza and a ground invasion – has killed nearly 1 in 100 people in the Strip.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said early Friday that 20,057 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since 7 October.
The death toll is far higher than in any recent conflict in Gaza. It is higher than the 15,000 Palestinians killed in the violence that followed the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Palestinians call this mass displacement a “Nakba,” or “catastrophe.”
Neta K. Crawford, co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University, which tracks conflict casualties, says the death rate among the population is similar to that of 20th-century wars. She noted:
This is, in the 21st century, a significant and out-of-the-norm level of destruction.
