Palestinian death toll in Gaza nears 21,000

News Desk :
The Palestinian death toll has surged to 20,915 since Oct. 7, the Health Ministry said Tuesday.

Spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said 54,918 others have been injured in the relentless Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, reports Al Jazeera.
“At least 241 people were killed and 382 others injured in Israeli attacks in the last 24 hours,” al-Qudra said in a statement.

Israeli air and ground attacks on Gaza since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, have left the enclave in ruins, with half of its housing damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million residents displaced within the densely populated territory amid acute shortages of food and clean water.

Around 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 241 people were killed in the past 24 hours and 382 injured.

The Israeli military says the air force hit 100 targets in the south of the Gaza Strip in 24 hours.

Israeli bombing kills Palestinians overnight in Khan Younis, Bureij, Juhor ad-Dik and Nuseirat, according to the Palestinian state news agency Wafa.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says war will not stop and he is ready to encourage Palestinians in Gaza to leave the enclave, according to Israeli media reports. Hamas has condemned the statement.

At least 20,915 people have been killed and 54,918 wounded in Israeli attacks since October 7. The revised death toll from Hamas’s attack on Israel stands at 1,139.

Palestinians lined up to touch the shrouded bodies of those killed in Israeli strikes on the camp in a funeral on Monday, commemorating dozens of people who were killed, many of them women and children. An Al Jazeera reporter in Gaza said the figure has now reached more than 100.

The Government Media Office in Gaza said seven families were wiped out in the Israeli attack on a residential square in the camp.
“The Israeli army doesn’t spare civilians,” Zeyad Awad, a resident of Maghazi, told Al Jazeera.

“My child said to me, ‘Help me! What’s happening? I can’t breathe,'” he added.

The night before Christmas in Gaza was marked by some of the most intense bombardments in the current round of fighting between Israel and the Palestinian armed group Hamas with Israeli strikes levelling buildings and leaving families trapped beneath piles of rubble.