The population of Gaza has fallen 6% since the war with Israel began nearly 15 months ago as about 100,000 Palestinians left the enclave while more than 55,000 are presumed dead, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
Buildings lie in ruin inside the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, as seen from southern Israel, January 1, 2025. Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach
The population of Gaza has fallen 6% since the war with Israel began nearly 15 months ago as about 100,000 Palestinians left the enclave while more than 55,000 are presumed dead, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
Around 45,500 Palestinians have been killed since the war began but another 11,000 are missing, the bureau said, citing numbers from the Palestinian Health Ministry.
As such, the population of Gaza has declined by about 160,000 during the course of the war to 2.1 million, with more than a million or 47% of the total children under the age of 18, the PCBS said.
Israel's foreign ministry said the PCBS data was "fabricated, inflated, and manipulated in order to vilify Israel".
The PCBS said some 22% of Gaza's population currently faces catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, according to the criteria of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global monitor.
Included in that 22% are some 3,500 children at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of food, the bureau said.
Reporting by Maytaal Angel and Ali Sawafta
Israel killed a commander of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in an airstrike on southern Lebanon on Friday, further testing a ceasefire that halted last year's war between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah group.
Israeli troops moved into an area of northern Gaza to expand what they call a security zone around the edge of the enclave, the military said on Friday, days after the government announced plans to seize large areas with an operation in the south.
The Israeli military is conducting an investigation into an incident in Gaza in which a number of emergency and aid workers were killed, a military spokesperson said on Thursday, while rejecting that the killings could be called an "execution".
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