'Horrific Reality': Nearly 70% of UN-Verified Gaza Deaths Are Women and Children

Nearly 7 in 10 people killed by Israeli forces in Gaza during an earlier six-month period of the ongoing assault on the Palestinian enclave were women and children, the United Nations human rights office said this week.

The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) verified 8,119 of the more than 34,500 Palestinians killed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombs and bullets between November 2023 and April 2024. Among those killed were 3,588 children and 2,036 women ranging in age from newborns to nonagenarians. Minors under the age of 18 made up 44% of the victims in the analysis.

The OHCHR report noted the "unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness, disease, displacement, detention, and destruction" wrought by Israel's onslaught, as well as the "wanton disregard" by Israeli forces and Hamas of international humanitarian law.

The analysis also highlights "the Israeli government's continuing unlawful failures to allow, facilitate, and ensure the entry of humanitarian aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated mass displacement."

"If committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population... these violations may constitute crimes against humanity," OHCHR said. "And if committed with intent to destroy—in whole or in part—a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, they may also constitute genocide."

South Africa is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. On Thursday, Ireland became the latest of around 30 countries and regional blocs to announce its intent to intervene in the case on behalf of Palestine.

OHCHR found that 88% of the verified Palestinian fatalities from Israeli attacks on residential buildings were people killed in strikes that claimed at least five lives. In recent weeks, Israel's renewed offensive in northern Gaza—which some experts believe is an attempt to ethnically cleanse the area by bombing and starving its people before forcibly expelling them to make way for Israeli recolonization—has wiped out a staggering number of civilians, including many women and children, in single strikes on homes, hospitals, and refugee camps.

"The high number of fatalities per attack was due to the IDF's use of weapons with wide area effects in densely populated areas," the analysis states, adding that some Palestinians may have been killed by errant projectiles launched by Hamas or other Gaza-based militants.

The new report also raises concerns over Isrsel's forcible transfer of Palestinians, systematic attacks on medical workers, journalists, and reported use of white phosphorus munitions—which are banned in populated areas.

Israel has not yet responded to the OHCHR report but has previously said that it "will continue to act, as it always has done, according to international law."

Since October 7, 2023, when Israeli forces launched their assault on the densely populated coastal enclave of 2.3 million people in response to the Hamas-led attack on Israel, the Gaza Ministry of Health and U.N. agencies say that more than 43,600 Palestinians have been killed and over 102,500 others wounded. More than 10,000 others are missing and believed dead and buried beneath the ruins of bombed homes and other structures.

Among those killed, say officials, are more than 18,000 children. Last month, the U.K.-based charity Oxfam International said that Israel's yearlong assault on Gaza has been the deadliest year of conflict for women and children anywhere in the world over the past two decades.

The relentless death and destruction has caused the "complete psychological destruction" of Gaza's youth, according to the charity Save the Children. The same has been said of many Gazans of all ages.

Last December, the U.N. Children's Fund called Gaza "the world's most dangerous place to be a child." Earlier this year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called "List of Shame" of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts.

The ICJ—which is a U.N. body—has issued three provisionsal orders in the ongoing genocide case, including directives for Israel to prevent genocidal acts, stop its assault on Rafah, and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel has been accused of flouting all three orders.

"The trends and patterns of violations, and of applicable international law as clarified by the International Court of Justice, must inform the steps to be taken to end the current crisis," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement Friday.

"The violence must stop immediately, the hostages and those arbitrarily detained must be released, and we must focus on flooding Gaza with humanitarian aid," he added.