RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel’s war to destroy Hamas has killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, health officials in Gaza said Friday, as Israel expanded its offensive and ordered tens of thousands more people to leave their homes.
The deaths in Gaza amount to nearly 1% of the territory’s prewar population — the latest indication of the 11-week-old conflict’s staggering human toll.
Israel’s aerial and ground offensive has been one of the most devastating military campaigns in modern history, displacing nearly 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people and leveling wide swaths of the tiny coastal enclave.
More than half a million people in Gaza — a quarter of the population — are starving, according to a report Thursday from the United Nations and other agencies.
After many delays, the UN Security Council adopted a watered-down resolution Friday, calling for immediately speeding up aid deliveries to desperate civilians in Gaza.
But the United States won the removal of a tougher call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities” between Israel and Hamas. It abstained in the vote, as did Russia, which wanted the stronger language. The resolution was the first on the war to make it through the council after the U.S. vetoed two earlier ones calling for humanitarian pauses and a full cease-fire.
Israel, shielded by the U.S., has resisted international pressure to scale back its offensive. The military has said that months of fighting lie ahead in southern Gaza, an area packed with the vast majority of the enclave’s population, many of whom were ordered to flee combat in the north earlier in the war.
Evacuation orders have pushed displaced civilians into ever-smaller areas of the south as troops focus on Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city.
The military said late Thursday that it is sending more ground forces, including combat engineers, to Khan Younis to target Hamas terrorists above ground and in tunnels.
On Friday, it ordered tens of thousands of residents to leave their homes in Burej, an urban refugee camp, and surrounding communities in central Gaza, suggesting a ground assault there could be next.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said Friday that it has documented 20,057 deaths in the fighting and more than 50,000 wounded.
For most of the war, Israel has also stopped entry of food, water, fuel and other supplies except for truck convoys of aid from Egypt, which cover only a fraction of the needs in Gaza.
Because of insufficient aid, the extent of starvation has eclipsed the near-famines of recent years in Afghanistan and Yemen, and the risk of famine is “increasing each day,” Thursday’s report said.
An Israeli military liaison officer said there is no food shortage in Gaza, and that sufficient aid is getting through.
“The reserves in Gaza Strip are sufficient for the near term,” Col. Moshe Tetro said from the Kerem Shalom cargo crossing, without elaborating.
Israel opened the Kerem Shalom crossing several days ago amid international demands to increase the flow of aid. But the military on Thursday struck the Palestinian side of the crossing, killing four staffers, and the UN said it was unable to pick up aid there for delivery. It was not immediately known if the UN resumed work there Friday.
The war has also pushed Gaza’s health sector into collapse. Only nine of its 36 health facilities are still partially functioning, all located in the south, according to the World Health Organization.
The agency reported soaring rates of diseases in Gaza, including a five-fold rise in diarrhea and increases in cases of meningitis, skin rashes and scabies.
