Palestinians search for their relatives under the rubble of a residential building destroyed by an Israeli strike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (AP)

Ten months into "Israel's" war on Gaza, the death toll has climbed past 40,000, according to Gaza's health authorities. The vast majority of those killed are civilians, with the figure representing nearly 2% of Gaza's prewar population—approximately one in every 50 residents.

Yet, even this staggering number does not capture the full scale of Palestinian losses.

Dr. Marwan al-Hams, director of field hospitals at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, told The Guardian, “This figure, 40,000, includes only those bodies that have been recovered and buried.”

“New procedures are being developed to include those who are missing or trapped beneath the rubble in the official death toll, but these have not yet been implemented,” he stressed.

Dr. Hams estimates that approximately 10,000 airstrike victims remain trapped beneath collapsed buildings due to a critical shortage of heavy machinery and fuel necessary to clear the steel and concrete debris in search of them.

Another face of Israeli killings

Another group of Palestinian war victims is absent from the official count, which only registers those killed directly by Israeli bombs and bullets as war casualties.

In the past 10 months, the Israeli aggression has led to mass displacement into overcrowded shelters and makeshift tents, hunger due to dwindling aid shipments, and dire shortages of clean water and sanitation, which have led to the spread of diseases.

Hospitals have been bombed and besieged, with their supplies of medicines, equipment, and fuel cut off, medical staff detained or killed, and wards overflowing with patients.

“People who have died as a result of the indirect impacts of the war, such as disease, starvation, and the collapse of the healthcare system, are not included in the war death toll,” Dr. Hams said as quoted by The Guardian. “A committee will be formed to count these victims, and it will begin its work immediately after the war ends,” he added.

Following previous Israeli aggressions on Gaza between 2009 and 2021, United Nations investigators compiled their lists of Palestinian martyrs, which closely matched those from Gaza's Health Ministry.

“Regrettably, we have considerable experience coordinating casualty figures with the Ministry of Health every few years,” said Farhan Haq, a spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General. “Their numbers have consistently been proven to be generally accurate.”

The enormity of children lost to Israel’s genocide is staggering. While sharing pictures of all is impossible, this a list of all the names of these innocent victims, a list that would take a day to read. Each name stands as a somber reminder of the unfolding slaughtering of… pic.twitter.com/nVobai0P1E
— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) October 26, 2023

By mid-August, Gaza's Health Ministry identified by name 32,280 Palestinians killed by "Israel" amid its ongoing genocidal war on Gaza. They have been classified as civilians due to their age or gender, including 10,627 children, 5,956 women, and 2,770 elderly people. Other civilian casualties include 168 journalists, 855 medical staff, and 79 paramedics. This accounts for more than 20,000 civilians and excludes many civilian men who have also been killed just because of their age.

This toll is unprecedented in the decades-long struggle between "Israel" and Palestine, and historically extraordinarily high. Massive bombs fall daily, often killing dozens at a time. Survivors of each Israeli attack are left not only to grieve but also to grapple with the trauma of living under the constant threat of death and the looming fear of further attacks.