More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war on Hamas following the group’s October 7 attack, the health ministry in the enclave said Thursday, yet another dark milestone in the 10-month-old conflict.
The ministry said 40 people had died in Gaza during the past 24 hours, taking the total number of deaths since October 7 to 40,005 – about one in every 55 people in the enclave. More than 92,401 have been injured.
The health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its figures but says most of the dead are women and children. Israel said last month that it had killed more than 17,000 combatants in Gaza since the start of the war. CNN cannot independently verify the ministry’s numbers.
In addition, at least another 10,000 people are missing and believed to be buried under rubble in Gaza, the Gaza government’s media office said earlier this week.
The soaring figures give a window into the daily suffering, malnutrition and volatility in Gaza after 10 months of conflict.
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has described it as “a very grim milestone at the world’s watch,” on X, adding that it is “a direct result of a collective failure to reach a ceasefire.”
And the milestone has been passed at a particularly unpredictable point in the conflict. A new round of ceasefire talks are due to begin Thursday, after the killings of senior figures in Hamas and the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah upended the leadership of both organizations and made the negotiations appear precarious.
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