TEHRAN – More than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed as the Israeli occupation regime’s genocidal attacks on Gaza continue with no end in sight.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza has reported that the death toll from the genocide carried out by the US-backed Israeli regime now exceeds 70,100, making it one of the worst civilian crises in decades.
The regime has also injured more than 170,983 Palestinians since October 7, 2023, according to officials.
Thousands more deaths remain uncounted, with bodies still buried beneath destroyed homes and shelters as rescue workers continue to try to recover bodies without the use of machinery.
Women and children make up the majority of those killed. More than 20,000 children lost their lives, and tens of thousands more were left orphaned or permanently disabled.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health said it was withholding thousands of reported deaths from being added to the official tally pending further investigation.
Two brothers, 8-year-old Fadi Abu Assi and 11-year-old Goma Abu Assi, were killed by a drone while collecting firewood for their wheelchair-bound father.
The psychological and social trauma inflicted on Gaza residents will shape the region’s reality for generations. In parallel with the military offensive, the Israeli regime launched an international campaign to cast doubt on the Ministry of Health’s casualty figures.
However, major international organizations rejected these efforts. The United Nations has said the ministry’s figures are reliable, while the World Health Organization has acknowledged that Gaza’s health authorities consistently provide reliable and verifiable data.
The Zionist regime’s efforts to reverse these numbers reflect its growing discomfort as evidence of large-scale civilian suffering continues to mount.
The scale of destruction across Gaza has been described by humanitarian organizations as catastrophic and systematic. Entire neighborhoods were wiped out, hospitals crippled, and critical infrastructure destroyed. This damage points to a strategy that goes far beyond military targets and directly dismantles the social infrastructure of an already besieged population.
More than 90% of Gaza’s population has been displaced, with 1.5 million people in need of emergency shelter, according to the United Nations Migration Agency. Families are forced to move almost constantly following shelling from one district to another.
The ongoing blockade, which severely restricts entry of food, medicine and essential goods, is pushing Gaza’s civilian population to the brink, with widespread hunger, dehydration and the rapid spread of disease. Human rights groups and UN experts have warned that the regime continues to commit genocide despite widespread condemnation.
The genocide has not stopped since Washington announced what many observers called a unilateral ceasefire on October 10, 2025. At least 352 Palestinians have been killed and around 1,000 injured during this period, with Israeli occupation forces violating the ceasefire almost daily.
In one recent attack, a Zionist regime drone strike killed brothers Fadi Abu Assi, 8, and Goma Abu Assi, 11, near a school sheltering displaced families in Beni Suhaira, southern Gaza.
According to their uncle, the boys were collecting firewood for their father, who is in a wheelchair. The administration claimed the children had entered a restricted “yellow line” zone that effectively cut the Strip in half. On Sunday, regime warplanes also attacked the eastern city of Rafah, killing four more Palestinians.
Despite mounting global pressure, the regime’s aggression continues across the Gaza Strip through air raids, artillery shelling, naval gunfire, and what human rights groups describe as near-total international impunity.