Direct killings UN experts and human rights organisations have characterised Israel's actions in Gaza as
extermination, a
crime against humanity that involves "the act of killing on a large scale". During the
first two months of bombing, Israel dropped 25,000 tonnes of explosives on the Gaza Strip. Many of these were unguided bombs dropped in densely populated areas, obliterating entire neighbourhoods. Since 7 October 2023, the IDF has been accused of extrajudicial killing of unarmed Palestinians and healthcare personnel. Israeli soldiers have killed Palestinian civilians, with a December 2023 UN report stating that they allegedly shot them in front of their families. In January 2024, Israeli soldiers shot at civilians waving
white flags, killing one. Doctors have identified numerous Palestinian children with single gunshot wounds to the head and chest, consistent with intentional targeting by Israeli forces. In April 2024,
mass graves were found containing over 300 corpses, allegedly including older people, women and wounded, and that during its operation "in the area of Nasser Hospital, in accordance to the effort to locate hostages and missing persons, corpses buried by Palestinians in the area of Nasser Hospital were examined." It added, "Bodies examined, which did not belong to
Israeli hostages, were returned to their place." At least 14,000 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza by December 2023. In late 2024, a study limited only to those fatalities confirmed by at least three independent sources, and only from November 2023 to April 2024 (about 8,100 people), corroborated previous reports by the UN and news outlets that 70% of fatalities were women and children. As of 31 August 2024, data from the Ministry of Health (only for those of the dead who were fully identified, about 34,000 people at the time) showed that 60% of those killed were women, children, and the elderly. Eleven months later (31 July 2025) the number of those of the dead who were fully identified reached 60,199, 52.6% of whom were women, children, and the elderly. By 14 January 2024, over 23,900 Gazans had been confirmed killed. By 10 May, deaths had topped 35,000, a third of them unidentified, with over 10,000 more estimated to be buried under the rubble. Over 52,000 people had been wounded by December 2023, and by May 2024 this number had risen to over 77,700. As of 10 October 2025, the Gaza Health Ministry reports that at least 67,194 Gazans were killed, which is between 3% and 4% of Gaza's total population.
+972 Magazine and
Local Call reported that the IDF decided early in the war to authorise killing up to 15 to 20 civilians per low-ranking militant, while for a senior militant killing more than 100 civilians was authorised. According to six Israeli intelligence officers, a major factor in the high death toll is the military's practice of striking targets in their homes with their families present, chosen partly because automated intelligence systems make those residences easier to identify. Another intelligence officer said that in targeting junior militants, Israel used only
dumb bombs, which can destroy entire buildings, to not "waste expensive bombs on unimportant people". In March 2024,
Haaretz reported that some Israeli commanders had set up "kill zones" in which soldiers were
commanded to kill anyone on sight, even if they were unarmed. According to an Israeli officer, "in practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate." In June, the
Associated Press found that Israel's campaign in Gaza was killing entire bloodlines of Palestinians to a "degree never seen before". According to testimony given to the Israeli
Knesset, Israeli soldiers driving
armoured bulldozers had been ordered to "run over terrorists, dead and alive, in the hundreds". , which was hosting
displaced sheltering Palestinians.|286x286px The proportion of women and children among the dead is disputed, but the names, gender, and age of 60,000+ of the victims are known and published. On 7 May 2024, total deaths quoted by the UN were 34,735, of which 24,686 are fully identified: 52% women and children, 8% elderly of all genders, and 40% men. A year later (31 July 2025), per the Gaza Ministry of Health, the number of fatalities identified by name reached 60,199: 28,728 (48%) were women and children, 2,928 (5%) were elderly of all genders (defined as those aged 65 or older), and 28,543 (47%) were men. A minimum of 18,457 children had been killed since October 2023. Data collection has become increasingly difficult for the Gaza Health Ministry due to the destruction of infrastructure. Professor
Michael Spagat found an urgent need for a transparent methodology to reconcile its top-line death numbers—34,535 as of 30 April 2024—with its detailed breakdowns, including only those of the dead who were fully identified, summing to 24,653 on the same date. The ministry's figures for the total number killed have been contested by Israeli authorities but accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services, the UN, and the
World Health Organization. The IDF denied this, saying the figures were inaccurate and inconsistent with its data. A 2025 paper on the Gaza war estimated 64,260 deaths from traumatic injury between October 2023 and 30 June 2024, and likely exceeding 70,000 by October 2024, with 59.1% being women, children and the elderly. It concluded that the GHM undercounted trauma-related deaths by 41% in its report, and also noted that its findings "underestimate the full impact of the military operation in Gaza, as they do not account for non-trauma-related deaths resulting from health service disruption, food insecurity, and inadequate water and sanitation." A comparable estimate for traumatic injury deaths was around 80,000 for January 2025. A February study in
The Lancet estimated that life expectancy in the Gaza Strip between October 2023 and September 2024 decreased by 34.9 years, excluding indirect deaths. The study also used census and registration data to assess the reliability of the Gaza Health Ministry's death count, and found no substantial errors. In May 2025, finance minister
Bezalel Smotrich claimed that Israel was targeting Hamas's civilian workers, saying, "We're eliminating ministers, bureaucrats, money handlers—everyone who holds up Hamas's civilian rule." Killing civilian members of Hamas is in itself illegal. Starting in June 2025, IDF soldiers said they were ordered to
shoot at crowds of Palestinians near
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid sites, killing over 1,000 people. Amnesty International alleged Israel was trying to restrict aid to starve and inflict genocide upon the Palestinians. In November 2025, a study by the
Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research estimated that the total number of violent deaths in Gaza was between 100,000 and 126,000, of which 27% were children under 15 years old, and 24% women. Amnesty International and B'Tselem asserted that the genocide hadn't ended during the ceasefire, partly citing the continued killing of Palestinians. Between the start of the ceasefire in October 2025 and February 2026, Israel has killed 603 people.
Indirect deaths and lack of treatment Rasha Khatib,
Martin McKee, and
Salim Yusuf published an estimate of the number of deaths, directly or indirectly caused by the conflict, that by July 2024 had already occurred or would occur in the coming months and years. Indirect Palestinian deaths from disease are expected to be much higher due to the intensity of the conflict, destruction of healthcare infrastructure, lack of food, water, shelter, and safe places for civilians to flee, and reduction in
UNRWA funding. They estimated that the total conflict-related deaths in Gaza will likely be four to 16 times higher than the reported death toll. By multiplying the reported deaths by five, they argued that "186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza". Spagat wrote that their estimate "lacks a solid foundation and is implausible", but it was "fair to call attention to the fact that not all of the deaths are going to be direct violent ones", and has called the death toll in Gaza "staggeringly high". An October 2024 letter by US healthcare workers who had served in Gaza since 7 October 2023 tried to estimate the number of Gazans who had died of starvation based on publicly available IPC reports. It said the most conservative estimate was that at least 62,413 people in Gaza had died from starvation, most of them young children; this estimate was based on the assumption that catastrophic (level 5) food insecurity results in a death rate of at least 2 deaths per 10,000 people per day. The physicians also estimated that at least 5,000 people had died from lack of access to care for chronic diseases. The indirect death estimates in two studies reviewed by
The Economist implied that the life expectancy in Gaza has fallen by 35 years, rivalling the
Rwandan genocide in absolute terms.
Starvation and blockade In February 2024,
Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International both released statements declaring Israel had failed to comply with the ICJ's 26 January ruling to prevent genocide by
blocking aid from entering Gaza. A Refugees International report found that Israel had "consistently and groundlessly impeded aid operations within Gaza". The historian Melanie Tanielian argues that starvation and blockade should be foregrounded as methods of genocide alongside mass bombing. In an April report,
B'Tselem called the unfolding famine "the product of a deliberate and conscious Israeli policy". Elyse Semerdjian characterised Israel's actions as
genocide by attrition. In October 2023, the
World Food Programme warned of Gaza's dwindling food supply, and in December, alongside the UN, it reported that more than half of Gaza's population was "starving", fewer than one in ten were eating every day, and 48% were suffering "extreme hunger". Palestinian Foreign Minister
Riyad al-Maliki referred to "Israel's deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war against the people it occupied"; an Israeli official called the charge "blood-libellous" and "delusional". In December 2023, Human Rights Watch found that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war by deliberately denying access to food and water. In January 2024, UN experts accused Israel of "destroying Gaza's food system and using food as a weapon against the Palestinian people". In February 2024, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich personally blocked US-funded shipments of flour from entering Gaza, in violation of promises Israel had made to the US government. In early 2024, the
United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food
Michael Fakhri said that Israel is "culpable" of genocide because "Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian" and because Israel was denying food to Palestinians by halting humanitarian aid and "intentionally" destroying small-scale fishing vessels, greenhouses and orchards in Gaza ... We have never seen a civilian population made to go so hungry so quickly and so completely, that is the consensus among starvation experts. Israel is not just targeting civilians, it is trying to damn the future of the Palestinian people by harming their children. After the ICJ ruling, the number of aid trucks Israel allowed into Gaza dropped by 40%. In the ICJ's March reaffirmation of provisional measures, the court highlighted the "unprecedented levels of food insecurity experienced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip over recent weeks, as well as the increasing risks of epidemics", acknowledging that since the Court's January order there had been a "lack of Israeli compliance" resulting in "the catastrophic living conditions" deteriorating further. In March 2024, 12 Israeli human rights organisations signed an open letter accusing Israel of failing to abide by the ICJ ruling to prevent genocide by facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid. In April the UN special rapporteur on the right to health
Tlaleng Mofokeng said Israel was "killing and causing irreparable harm against Palestinian civilians with its bombardments", adding, "They are also knowingly and intentionally imposing
famine" and accusing Israel of "genocide". In October 2024, Israel had reportedly adopted a modified version of the
Generals' Plan. The proposed plan included orders for all residents of northern Gaza to leave within a week; a full siege on water, food, and fuel; and then the arrest or killing of all who remained. By mid-October 2024, Israel had ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza and prevented the entry of humanitarian aid for almost two weeks. According to Stephen Devereux, avoidable deaths due to starvation as a result of Israeli policies "almost certainly constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity". On 21 November 2024, the International Criminal Court
issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the former defence minister Yoav Gallant, asserting that the two "bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare". Israel lifted restrictions on aid into Gaza in January–February 2025 during the first stage of
the January ceasefire. But on 2 March, Israel announced that all humanitarian aid would be blocked indefinitely unless Hamas agreed to alter the terms of the ceasefire deal, which Hamas refused to do. Within four days, food supplies in Gaza had rapidly depleted while the price of food had more than doubled. Aid agencies such as
Oxfam and
UNICEF warned of mass starvation if the aid freeze continued. Oxfam policy lead Bushra Khalidi predicted "the total collapse of systems that sustain life". Lawyer Salah Abdel-Ati said Israel's actions were illegal under the
Geneva Conventions, which prohibits the destruction or withholding of essentials such as food in combat zones. In May 2025, after blocking the import of all food, medicine, and fuel for two and a half months, Netanyahu announced that Israel would allow "minimal humanitarian aid" into Gaza due to international pressure. Israel has proposed using private companies to distribute aid to the south of Gaza only. The plan is backed by the US, which has created the
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to deliver aid without "Hamas stealing, looting or leveraging this assistance for its own ends". The United Nations aid chief
Tom Fletcher criticised the plan, saying it "forces further displacement" and "makes aid conditional on political and military aims". Numerous Palestinians have been
killed by Israeli forces while approaching GHF aid distribution points. In August 2025, it was reported that Israel planned to surge aid to other parts of Gaza while cutting off all aid to Gaza City to force residents to evacuate while Israel takes over the city. As of August 2025, projections show the entire population is experiencing "high levels of acute food insecurity", with about 641,000 people experiencing
catastrophic levels. The IPC confirmed famine is taking place in the
Gaza Governorate. Two weeks after the
October 2025 ceasefire came into effect, dozens of NGOs, including the
Norwegian Refugee Council and
Doctors Without Borders, announced that Israel was arbitrarily blocking their shipments of aid to Gaza. World Health Organisation head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, "the situation still remains catastrophic because what's entering is not enough" and "there is no dent in hunger because there is not enough food". By December 2025, the food situation improved, with famine and catastrophic food insecurity (level 5) no longer happening; but 27% of the population still experienced emergency-level food insecurity (level 4) and another 50% of the population experienced crisis-level food insecurity (level 3). At the turn of the year, Israel's expulsion of Doctors Without Borders and several other humanitarian organizations from Gaza raised fears that the effects of malnutrition on the population would not be adequately treated or monitored; these organizations helped alleviate effects of famine/malnutrition by treating children with severe acute malnutrition. Israel has also continued blocking certain medical aid.
Deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure Mark Levene and Elyse Semerdjian locate the mass destruction of infrastructure within Israel's
Dahiya doctrine, implemented against Gaza since 2006, with Levene calling it
urbicide and a tool of genocide. In October 2024,
Forensic Architecture concluded, "Israel's military campaign in Gaza is organised, systematic, and intended to destroy conditions of life and life-sustaining infrastructure". In July 2025,
The Guardian reported that "about 70% of the structures in Gaza are either completely destroyed or severely damaged". Israel was reportedly paying contractors up to 5,000 shekels per building demolished. In February 2025 it was reported that at least 15 children had died of
hypothermia over the winter due to Israel's destruction of housing and power facilities. In May 2025, Netanyahu said, "we are destroying more and more homes, and Gazans have nowhere to return to. The only inevitable outcome will be the wish of Gazans to emigrate outside of the Gaza Strip." In a December 2024 report, Human Rights Watch accused Israel of committing acts of genocide in Gaza by targeting water and sanitation infrastructure and depriving Palestinians of adequate access to water. The report alleges that Israel intentionally damaged solar panels powering treatment plants, a reservoir, and warehouses, while blocking repair materials and fuel for generators, cutting electricity supplies, and attacking workers. According to B'Tselem, Israel has destroyed 84% of Gaza's water facilities, while in a report authored and published by the
World Bank,
European Union, and United Nations it was reported that 89% of Gaza's water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities had been destroyed or damaged. UN Special Rapporteur
Pedro Arrojo-Agudo called these attacks "an important part of a genocidal strategy". Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip, has been razed; this has been mostly carried out by bulldozing and controlled demolitions of buildings, rather than by aerial bombardment. In July 2025, the BBC reported that Israel had engaged in controlled demolitions of civilian infrastructure, potentially in violation of the Geneva Convention. The BBC reported an IDF spokesperson saying, "Hamas and other terrorist organizations conceal military assets in densely populated civilian areas. The IDF identifies and destroys terrorist infrastructure located, among other places, within buildings in these areas." A spokesperson for the IDF said it was acting "in accordance with the ceasefire framework" as the demolitions occurred behind the
Yellow Line, in the portion of Gaza under Israeli military control, which comprises 53% of Gaza. South Africa and others criticised the
Gaza Strip evacuations as a key component of the genocide. B'Tselem mentions statements by Israeli high-ranking officials that a "central objective of the war" was ethnic cleansing. On 6 October 2024, Israel designated northern Gaza as a combat zone and ordered the civilian population to evacuate. Both Israeli military analysts and the
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights alleged that this was the first stage of the "
Generals' Plan", a policy proposed by the former Israeli general
Giora Eiland to force Palestinians out of Gaza. The
UN Human Rights Office said that Israel may have caused the "destruction of the Palestinian population in Gaza's northernmost governorate through death and displacement." During the
January 2025 ceasefire, displaced persons were able to return to their homes in northern Gaza. After Israel
broke the ceasefire in March 2025, displacement orders resumed. The
2025 Gaza City offensive led to further evacuation orders for 1.2 million people.
Attacks on healthcare In November 2023 in
The Lancet and in February 2024 in
BMJ Global Health, multiple doctors detailed how the targeting of Gazan health infrastructure and medical personnel, coupled with rhetoric used by Israeli politicians, amounts to genocide. Legal scholars have supported this assessment.
Gaza's healthcare system faced humanitarian crises as a result of Israel's assault: hospitals began shutting down by 23 October as they ran out of fuel. When hospitals lost power, multiple
premature babies in
NICUs died. Israeli airstrikes have killed numerous medical staffers, and ambulances and health institutions have been destroyed. reported that scores of ambulances and medical facilities were damaged or destroyed, and that its own staff were killed. The
Gaza Health Ministry said the healthcare system had "totally collapsed". In April 2024, UN special rapporteur on the right to health
Tlaleng Mofokeng said, "The destruction of healthcare facilities continues to catapult to proportions yet to be fully quantified."
Preventing births In March 2025, a UN investigation concluded that Israel had committed genocidal acts in Gaza by systematically destroying its reproductive healthcare facilities while imposing a siege preventing necessary medications for deliveries, pregnancies, and
neonatal care, causing "irreversible" harm to Palestinians' reproductive prospects in Gaza. The commission also found that Israeli forces intentionally destroyed Gaza's main
in-vitro fertility clinic, Al-Basma IVF Centre, which served 2,000 to 3,000 patients a month. Israel destroyed about 4,000
embryos and 1,000 specimens of
sperm and unfertilised
eggs in the attack. No evidence that the building was used for military purposes was found. The commission concluded that the destruction of the clinic "was a measure intended to prevent births among Palestinians in Gaza, which is a genocidal act". UN experts reported that they had found that Israel had systematically destroyed women's health care facilities and used sexual violence as a war strategy, thereby carrying out genocidal acts against Palestinians.
Destruction of cultural, religious and educational sites Amnesty International notes that "while the destruction of historical, cultural and religious property or heritage is not considered a prohibited act under the Genocide Convention, the ICJ has established that such destruction can provide evidence of intent to physically destroy the group when carried out deliberately." The
Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has said that Israel's deliberate destruction of cemeteries in Gaza indicates genocidal intent because it enacts the "
erasure of a people's...historical presence". Since 7 October 2023, the IDF has been accused of using excessive force against dozens of schools; theft; desecration and mutilation of deceased Palestinians; The targeting of cultural and educational sites have also been cited as genocidal acts, as has the use of
white phosphorus. On 18 April 2024, UN experts in
Geneva condemned Israel for its "
scholasticide" in Gaza, finding that it had destroyed more than 80% of schools and killed 5,000 students, 261 teachers, and dozens of professors. In June 2025, UN experts published a report saying Israel had committed the crime against humanity of
extermination for "killing civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites". According to the report, Israel has destroyed over 90% of educational buildings in Gaza.
Serious bodily and mental harm, and sexual violence The number of injured since 7 October 2023 due to Israeli military actions is greater than 170,000, In the same period over 1,040 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank. Israel has been accused of indiscriminate
mass detentions while prisoners said they were threatened with mutilation, death, arson, and rape, and torturing Palestinians detained without charges. By March 2024, an estimated 17,000 children were "
wounded children, no surviving family" (WCNSF), a new medical term. As of 25 August 2024, the UN estimates that most of Gaza's 2.2 million people are confined to roughly , causing a critical lack of basic services, like clean water, and diseases spreading widely, such as
Hepatitis C. Amnesty International reported that the pattern of abuses inside Israeli prisons "underscores the systematic dehumanization and mental and physical abuse of Palestinians in Gaza and may also be taken into account with a view to inferring genocidal intent from pattern of conduct." According to the
Independent International Commission of Inquiry, gender-based and sexual violence were committed "to dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people in whole or in part." According to a UN committee, the Gaza war has resulted in disabilities for more than 21,000 children as of September 2025. Multiple commentators have argued that deliberate ecocide is a central component of Israel's genocide in Gaza. Scholars have argued that the destruction of the environment sustaining a population including its water, land, and food systems constitutes a genocidal act, as it inflicts conditions of life calculated to destroy the group, in whole or in part.
Targeting of specific professions Educators The killing of educators and destruction of educational infrastructure such as schools and universities has been recognised by scholars as a component of the Gaza genocide. In support of its 2025 resolution declaring that Israel's policies and actions in Gaza had met the legal definition of genocide, the IAGS wrote, "Israel has destroyed schools, universities, libraries, museums, and archives, all of them essential to the continued existence of Palestinian collective well-being and identity".
Journalists , a Palestinian journalist whom Israel
accused without evidence of being a member of Hamas and
killed in an
airstrike 24 March 2025 Press freedom organisations and human rights groups have characterised the systematic killing of Palestinian journalists as a component of the genocide.
The International Federation of Journalists reported that 56 media professionals were killed in 2025 alone as part of the "genocidal war on Gaza". South Africa cited Palestinian journalists being "killed at a rate significantly higher than has occurred in any conflict in the past 100 years" as part of its
application accusing Israel of genocide. A
Brown University study found that Israel had killed more journalists in Gaza since October 2023 than "the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined". The
CPJ observed that "Israel is engaging in the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists that CPJ has ever documented" and that there was a "pattern of journalists in Gaza reporting receiving threats, and subsequently, their family members being killed". In a case filed with the
ICC, the
RSF accused the IDF of the targeted killing of seven journalists in Gaza between 22 October and 15 December 2023: Asem Al-Barsh, Bilal Jadallah, Montaser Al-Sawaf, Rushdi Al Siraj, Hassouna Salim, Sari Mansour, and Al Jazeera's Abudaqa. Targeting journalists is a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute. The
PCHR alleges that this killing is to intimidate and deter journalists from coverage of current events.
Physicians for Human Rights Israel said the killing and detention of over 1,800 healthcare workers, including senior specialists, is not incidental to war but a deliberate strategy to decimate medical capacity and render future recovery nearly impossible and that this met the criteria for genocide. UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health
Tlaleng Mofokeng called the assault on Gaza's medical sector "medicide" and a component of the ongoing genocide. ==Academic and legal discourse==