Nearly 70% of Gaza war dead are women and children, UN says
Palestinian women mourn their children killed by Israeli bombardment at the Indonesian Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip on 18 November 2023
Mallory Moench reports in BBC News on 8 November 2024:
The UN Human Rights Office said on Friday nearly 70 percent of the fatalities it has verified in Israel’s war on Gaza were women and children, and condemned what it called a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.
The UN’s Human Rights Office has condemned the high number of civilians killed in the war in Gaza, saying its analysis shows close to 70% of verified victims over a six-month period were women and children.
The agency said the high number was largely due to Israel’s use of weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated areas, although some deaths may have been the result of errant projectiles by Palestinian armed groups.
The report said it found “unprecedented” levels of international law violations, raising concerns about “war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes”. Israel has in the past said it targets Hamas and takes steps to mitigate risk to civilians by using precise munitions. The BBC contacted the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment in response to Friday’s report.
The UN agency said it verified the details of 8,119 people killed in Gaza from November 2023 to April 2024. Its analysis found around 44% of verified victims were children and 26% women. The ages most represented among the dead were five to nine-year-olds. About 80% of victims were killed in residential buildings or similar housing, the agency added.
The report said the data indicates “an apparent indifference to the death of civilians and the impact of the means and methods of warfare”.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures the UN sees as reliable, has reported a death toll of more than 43,300 people over the past 13 months. Many more bodies are believed to remain under the rubble of bombarded buildings.