This handout picture released by the Israeli army on August 15, 2024, shows Israeli troops operating on the ground in the Gaza Strip amid the continuing conflict between Israel and Hamas. | Photo by Israeli Army / AFP
JERUSALEM — The bloodiest ever Gaza war which broke out more than 10 months ago has taken an appalling human toll.
At least 40,005 people have been killed in the besieged Palestinian territory in Israel’s retaliatory campaign for the October 7 attack which triggered the war, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.
It does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant casualties.
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The unprecedented Hamas raid on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,198 Israelis and foreigners, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
While Hamas has not reported how many fighters it has lost, the Israeli military said on Thursday it had killed “more than 17,000” militants in Gaza since the war in the Palestinian territory broke out.
On July 16, the military said it had killed and apprehended around 14,000 militants, including six brigade commanders, more than 20 battalion commanders, and around 150 company commanders.
Like many of the casualty figures from the war, this is impossible to confirm independently.
According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, had between 15,000 and 20,000 fighters. Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies cites 15,000 but underlines that Arab media spoke of 40,000 fighters.
Israeli losses
Around one-third of those killed in Israel on October 7 and in the two subsequent days of violence were members of the security forces — 306 soldiers, 60 police officers and 10 members of the Shin Bet internal security service, Israel said.
Seventy-nine of those killed during the attack were foreigners, mostly Thai workers.
The Israeli army says 690 troops have died since the war began, 20 of those in friendly fire.
Out of the total, 330 have been killed in the Gaza military campaign since Israel launched its ground operations in the territory on October 27, the army said.
At least 18 Israelis — soldiers and civilians, including Jewish settlers — have been killed in violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the Gaza war began.
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Twenty-six civilians and 22 Israeli soldiers have died in the north in Hezbollah rocket and missile attacks from Lebanon.
Of the 251 Israeli and foreign hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7, 111 remain in Gaza, of whom the military says 39 are dead.
During a one-week truce in November, militants released 105 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners, while the bodies of 24 hostages have been returned to Israel since the war began.
The Israeli military has called up 300,000 reservists, 17 percent of them women, since the war began.
Palestinian losses
In addition to the deaths in Gaza, attacks by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied West Bank have killed at least another 632 Palestinians, according to an AFP tally based on data provided by the Ramallah-based health ministry.
Israel said that until July 16, it had struck around 37,000 targets in Gaza from the air since the war began.
It said it hit more than “25,000 terrorist infrastructure and launch sites” during that period.
– Lebanon and Syria –
Israeli fire since October has killed 570 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but at least 118 civilians as well, according to an AFP tally.
Hezbollah announced that more than 370 of its fighters have been killed.
Fighters from other groups in Lebanon including Hamas and the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement are also included in the total.
The cross-border fire has displaced tens of thousands of people in southern Lebanon and northern Israel.
At least 25 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in Israeli strikes in Syria, according to an AFP tally, with seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards killed in a strike on Damascus in April.
Last week, Israel said at least 7,500 rockets have been fired over the border from Lebanon since the war erupted.