Civilians, the main victims of the conflict between Israel and the Hamas group

Civilians are the main victims of armed conflicts, including the one launched on October 7, 2023 by members of the terrorist group Hamas, who a month ago fired more than 5,000 rockets at residential areas in Israeli cities, killing several young people who were at a music festival near the Gaza Strip and who slaughtered several families from nearby kibbutzim while also taking 240 hostages.

The result of the carnage of October 7 and the following days? Over 1,400 Jews killed, most of whom were civilians (only 350 soldiers lost their lives, according to the Jerusalem Post), according to Israeli officials.

What came next?

A violent response by the Israeli military, which first systematically bombarded Gaza cities and civilian targets - including hospitals - which Jewish officers say they had information that Hamas members were hiding in or were being used as command centers of Palestinian terrorists.

As a result of the bombing that has been going on for almost a month, more than 10,000 Palestinians have lost their lives according to the data provided by the Ministry of Health in Gaza, of which almost 4,000 people killed are children.

Those data cannot be confirmed by any authority or impartial international organization, according to Associated Press journalists in an extensive analysis of this month, when the guns were not silent in Gaza and Israel.

The quoted source says: "The Ministry of Health is the only official source for the victims in Gaza. Israeli authorities closed border crossings in the Gaza Strip and denied access to the area for foreign journalists and people bringing humanitarian aid. However, the Associated Press is among the few international news agencies that have teams of correspondents in Gaza. Although journalists present there cannot do a comprehensive count, they saw a large number of bodies from Israeli airstrikes. (...) ‹‹The figures may not be perfectly accurate from minute to minute. "But they largely reflect the number of people killed and injured," said Michael Ryan, from the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Programme.

• Authorities provide incorrect data

Given that Israel is besieging and bombing the territory on an unprecedented scale, the quoted source says it is not easy to have an exact answer on the total casualties of the conflict.

Associated Press analysis shows: "Telephone service is operating intermittently. Internet and electricity do not exist. Airstrikes by Israeli forces have pulverized roads and leveled neighborhoods in Gaza, slowing rescue efforts. Doctors scribble on notepads in morgues and hospital wards, trying to keep track of bodies trapped under rubble and thrown into hastily dug mass graves. Chaos increased the likelihood of errors. In all this context, the Gaza Ministry of Health - an agency of the Hamas-controlled government - continues to count the number of victims."

And Associated Press correspondents discovered that some data provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health are not correct, including the death toll following the bombing of al-Ahli hospital in mid-October.

The material published by the AP states: "There were conflicting allegations about who was responsible, with Hamas officials blaming an Israeli airstrike and Israel saying it was caused by a stray rocket fired by Palestinian militants. American and French intelligence also concluded that it was probably caused by a missile. An Associated Press review of video, photos and satellite images, as well as consultation with experts, showed that the tragedy at al-Ahli hospital was likely caused by a rocket fired from Palestinian territory that exploded and crashed into the building. However, no definitive conclusion could be reached. There were also conflicting accounts of the death toll from the blast. Within an hour, the Gaza ministry reported that 500 Palestinians had been killed, then reduced the number to 471, while Israeli authorities disputed the number. US intelligence agencies estimate that between 100 and 300 people were killed, but have not said how they arrived at these figures. The confusion called into question credibility of the ministry in the territory ruled by Hamas".

• The dead in Gaza, piled up as victims of Israeli aggression

But the cited source says that on October 27, in response to US doubts about its figures, the Gaza Ministry of Health released a 212-page report listing every Palestinian killed in the war so far, including names, ID numbers, their age and gender.

The Associated Press analysis states: "A copy of the report provided to the AP identifies 6,747 Palestinians killed and says there are 281 unidentified bodies. The report does not categorize the casualties according to the locality where they died, nor does it distinguish between Palestinian civilian casualties and Hamas combatants. (...) The Ministry of Health does not report how the Palestinians were killed, whether by Israeli airstrikes, artillery fire or other means - such as Palestinian rockets falling into Gaza, describing all the dead as victims of "Israeli aggression" . This lack of transparency has drawn criticism. "When the Hamas health agency comes out with the numbers, take them with a grain of salt," Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, a spokesman for the Israeli military, told a news conference in which he repeatedly declined to comment. provide any alternative number of Palestinian casualties'.

However, an analysis of the more than 30 days of conflict between Israel and the Hamas group published by Al Jazeera claims that more than 10,000 Palestinians (including 4,000 children) were killed by the Israeli army, that 24,800 people (including 10,000 children) were injured and 1.5 million people (about 60% of the population of the Gaza Strip) were displaced by Israeli shelling. The Jerusalem Post noted yesterday that Hamas claims 10,570 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombings, including 4,324 children, and more than 26,400 people have been injured.

• Palestinian workers, illegally detained for three weeks by Israeli forces

Al Jazeera journalists specify that the conflict situation on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip was tense long before the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, and that at its origin would have been the crimes committed by the Israeli forces who last year alone killed 170 Palestinians (of which 30 children) and injured 9000 people.

The analysis published by Al Jazeera shows: "The number of Palestinians killed in 2023 has already significantly exceeded the number of deaths last year. Since January 1, 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 371 people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Almost half of the victims, 163 people, were killed in the last month. At least 43 of the victims are children. More than 2,300 people have been injured in the past month, including at least 244 children, with more than half of those injured in protests against the Gaza bombing. The number of fatal attacks carried out by Israeli citizens living in settlements in the border areas increased significantly after October 7, 2023. Some of the 700,000 Israeli settlers shot and killed the most Palestinians in the last month and injured 64 people of Arab origin from nearby towns. Since 7 October, the UN has recorded 202 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, of which 28 incidents resulted in Palestinian casualties, 141 incidents resulted in property damage, and 33 incidents resulting in both casualties and damage materials, which translates to a daily average of seven incidents compared to just three at the start of 2023. The UN also says that more than a third of these incidents involved threats with firearms, including shootings."

Furthermore, after the Hamas attacks on October 7, Israeli authorities arrested more than 3,200 Palestinian workers from Gaza, who were held in prisons for three weeks and released only in early November. Some of those detained told Al Jazeera journalists after their release that they were beaten and tortured by Israeli forces and that at least two workers died in prison.

A month into the conflict, the Israeli military says it is fighting in Gaza City to eliminate all members of Hamas, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will have "overall security responsibility" in Gaza "indefinitely" after the war his with Hamas. During this time, the US moved its main warships to the area to eliminate any intention of the Hezbollah group and other Arab states to intervene in the conflict between Israel and the Hamas group in Gaza.

As can be seen from the two analyses, death, destruction and despair dominate both sides of the border which separates Israel from the Gaza Strip. The images transmitted by the correspondents of the news agencies are heartbreaking and horrific. If on October 7 images of Palestinian men raising their arms in victory over a burning Israeli tank dominated, a month after the start of the conflict images of the disaster in Gaza predominate: entire blocks razed to the ground, destroyed houses, mosques in ruins, men digging with their bare hands into mountains of concrete blocks to search for survivors.

The only ray of hope for the civilians of Gaza caught in the middle of this conflict is the humanitarian support received from the UN and the European Union, as well as the partial opening of the border with Egypt for them to take refuge from the bombings systematically applied by the Israeli forces.