According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Gaza's population has fallen by six percent since the start of the war with Israel almost 15 months ago, with about 100,000 Palestinians leaving the enclave and more than 55,000 presumed dead.
About 45,500 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, more than half of them women and children, but another 11,000 were reported missing, the office said, citing data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Gaza's population therefore declined by approximately 160,000 to 2.1 million over the course of the war. PCBS reports that more than one million, or 47 percent, of the people remaining in the enclave are under 18 years of age.
Israel's foreign ministry said the PCBS data was “fabricated, inflated and manipulated to malign Israel.”
PCBS added that Israel “has unleashed brutal aggression against the Gaza Strip, targeting all forms of life: people, buildings and essential infrastructure… entire families have been deleted from the civil registers. The human and material losses are catastrophic.”
Accusations of genocide
Israel has faced accusations of genocide in Gaza due to the scale of death and destruction.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN's highest legal body, ruled last January that Israel must prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians, while Pope Francis suggested that the world community should investigate whether Israel's campaign in Gaza constitutes genocide. Earlier this month, Amnesty International released a report concluding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations of genocide, saying it respects international law and has the right to defend itself after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and precipitated the current war.
In a new report, Amnesty International has accused the state of Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians during the Gaza war, which Israel has vehemently denied, saying it abides by international law.
Israel's repeated attacks on Gaza hospitals, which it justified by claiming that Hamas militants were using hospitals as command centers, also sparked sharp criticism and fears that Israel was violating international law. The U.N. Human Rights Office said in a report Tuesday that attacks on hospitals had pushed Gaza's health care system “to near total collapse.”
During the conflict, approximately 90 percent of Gaza's population was internally displaced, many of them repeatedly displaced by changing evacuation orders.
The PCBS said about 22 percent of Gaza's population currently faces catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, according to the Phase Classification Criteria of Integrated Food Security, which is monitored globally.
The bureau said this 22 percent includes about 3,500 children at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of food.