JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Gaza’s population has fallen 6% since the war with Israel began nearly 15 months ago, as around 100,000 Palestinians have left the enclave, while more than 55,000 are believed to be dead, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
Some 45,500 Palestinians, more than half women and children, have been killed since the war began, but another 11,000 are missing, the office said, citing Palestinian health ministry figures.
As such, Gaza’s population shrank by about 160,000 during the war to 2.1 million, with more than a million or 47% of the total children under the age of 18, PCBS said.
It added that Israel “carried out a brutal aggression against Gaza targeting all kinds of life there; people, buildings and vital infrastructure…whole families have been erased from the civil registry. There are catastrophic human and material losses.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the PCBS data was “fabricated, inflated and manipulated to vilify Israel.”
Israel is facing accusations of genocide in Gaza due to the scale of the death and destruction.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ highest legal body, ruled last January that Israel must prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians, while Pope Francis suggested the global community should examine whether Israel’s campaign in Gaza constituted genocide.
Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations of genocide, saying it abides by international law and has the right to defend itself after a Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, killed 1,200 Israelis and precipitated the current war.
The PCBS said that around 22% of Gaza’s population currently faces catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, according to Global Monitoring’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification criteria.
That 22 percent includes about 3,500 children at risk of dying from malnutrition and lack of food, the office said.
