The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has released what it calls Flash Update #14, outlining the current state of hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel. That report, last updated on Oct. 20, 2023, reveals that 60 percent of the fatalities that have occurred thus far in Gaza at the hands of Israel are women and children.
The total number of deaths in the Gaza Strip ever since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel has now reached 4,137 people, while another 1,000 people remain missing that are presumed to be lying under all the rubble awaiting rescue or recovery.
Around 1.4 million people, more than half of Gaza's total population, is now classified as internally displaced persons (IDPs), meaning they have been driven out of their homes and are now either in route to another location or are injured or dead.
More than 544,000 Gazans are now sheltering in 147 UNRWA-designated emergency shelters (DES) as the situation deteriorates in anticipation of Israel's planned ground invasion of Gaza, which has not yet commenced.
(Related: Israel's claim that the Gaza Baptist Hospital bombing was a "failed" Hamas rocket has been verified as a lie – Israel bombed the health care facility, we now know.)
Roughly one-third of all housing units in Gaza have been damaged, destroyed since the October 7 Hamas strike on Israel
The Rafah, Kerem Shalom and Erez border crossings in and out of Gaza all remain closed, which is preventing the entry of desperately needed humanitarian aid including food, water, medicines and fuel – the day after the Hamas attack, Israel shut down access to all of these life-saving resources in Gaza.
United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres visited the Rafah crossing, which is between Gaza and Egypt, to reiterate his call for the immediate opening of the portal so assistance and humanitarian aid can enter.
Calling the Hamas attack on Israel "barbaric" and "to be condemned," Guterres still emphasized that there are real-life people in Gaza who have nothing to do with Hamas who are now being starved and bombed in Israeli airstrikes.
"The barbaric attack by Hamas needs to be condemned," Guterres said, adding, though, that this "cannot be a pretext for a collective punishment of the Palestinian people."
Israel's ground invasion has not even yet commenced, and still roughly one-third of all housing units in Gaza are now either destroyed or unlivable due to damage caused by Israeli airstrikes, according to the Ministry of Housing in Gaza.
Israel's full electricity blackout of Gaza, coupled with the ban on fuel imports to run backup generators, means that millions of Gazans now face starvation and potential death from lack of access to resources.
Various Palestinian armed groups are engaging in "indiscriminate rocket firing towards Israeli population centres," the UN also confirmed. Overall, about 1,400 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed in Israel, the vast majority of those deaths occurring on October 7, the day of the Hamas strike.
In Gaza, there are still said to be about 201 (sounds a lot like Event 201, eh?) people still being held hostage, prompting Guterres to call on Hamas to immediately and unconditionally release all of them.
In the West Bank, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces reached 82 this week, 25 of those being children.
"At least 74 Palestinian households, comprising 545 people, over half of whom are children, have been displaced from 13 herding / Bedouin communities in Area C of the West Bank since 7 October, amid intensified settler violence and access restrictions," OCHA further confirmed.
The latest news updates about the very dire and very serious escalating situation in Gaza and the Middle East can be found at Chaos.news.
Sources for this article include:
Please contact us for more information.