The death toll from Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip has surpassed 6,500, with many people succumbing to their wounds after hospitals began to shut down in the Palestinian territory.
Gaza’s health ministry announced Wednesday afternoon that the death toll had reached 6,546, with 17,439 injured from Israel’s air and artillery strikes. Most of these casualties have been women and children, with 2,704 children among the dead.
It also said that 700 people had been killed in the 24 hours between Tuesday and Wednesday, 300 of them children.
Israel has indiscriminately pounded the enclave for 19 days straight since Hamas' surprise attack on 7 October.
Many people have died as the health system in Gaza collapses, with Israel's siege putting a stranglehold on the movement of fuel and medical supplies into the enclave.
Several hospitals have already been forced to shut down.
Aid has trickled in from Egypt via the Rafah border crossing, but international organisations have said this was far from enough.
The United Nation’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said Wednesday that nearly 600,000 people were sheltering in 150 of their facilities.
"Our shelters are FOUR times over their capacities - many people are sleeping in the streets as current facilities are overwhelmed," the agency said.
It added that at least 40 facilities had been impacted in the war on Gaza.
Right after the Hamas attack, Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza, cutting off all supplies and vowing to keep the siege going until hostages were released.
Israel said Hamas killed over 1,400 people and took over 200 hostages when it stormed towns and settlements in the Gaza periphery on 7 October. Some of these hostages have reportedly died in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, while others have been released by Hamas.
The Palestinian group says the attack came in response to decades of Israel’s blockade on Gaza and its occupation of Palestinian territories, and the crimes which have been committed under this occupation.
Israel's crackdown continues in West Bank
Elsewhere, in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, more than 80 Palestinians were arrested overnight Tuesday-Wednesday, the Palestinian Prisoners' Club (PPC) said.
Some of these arrests allegedly included Hamas leaders.
The latest arrests bring the total number of Palestinians detained in the West Bank since 7 October to 1,350.
"The number of prisoners in the [Israeli] occupation prisons, according to available data, reached about 6,600 after the escalating arrest campaigns since October 7, including at least 50 female prisoners, and more than 1,600 administrative detainees," the PPC said.
The group accused Israel of carrying out "systematic, premeditated assassination" against prisoners, after two of the detainees died in their prison cells in less than 24 hours earlier this week.
The West Bank has seen a spike of Israeli raids and attacks on Palestinians since the Gaza war erupted. It is also widely believed Israel is carrying out arbitrary arrests in the territory to exert further pressure on Hamas to release the hostages, some of whom are of dual nationality.