“Five minutes after I got his birth certificate, I was given his death certificate.” On August 13, Muhammad Abou Al-Qoumsan, 33, had barely left Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, where he had just registered his twins, when he received a phone call asking him to return. There he discovered the bodies of his two children, a boy and a girl, Ayssal and Asser, born three days earlier, killed in the shelling of their building in the Deir Al-Balah neighborhood, which is home to some of the estimated two million Gazans displaced by the war. “I found them in a cold storage room, in the morgue”he testified through tears, filmed from a hospital hallway.
Ayssal and Asser Abou Al-Qoumsan, with identification numbers 470333964 and 470333980, are among 710 children under the age of 1 who have died in Gaza since the start of the war, out of a list of 34,344 residents of the territory who have lost their lives under bombardment and were identified by the local Ministry of Health on 31 August; 7,613 people have yet to be identified to date, having been declared dead on arrival at emergency rooms.
On page 215, the first adult
Published on September 16, the 649-page document lists the deceased, classified by age, national identity number, sex and date of birth. By Noura Walid Abdelsalam Shahine, “0 years”born on 1stAhem January 2023, to Ahmad Ibrahim Al-Tahraoui, “101 years”born on 1stAhem January 1922. It highlights the high price paid by those under 18: 11,355 identified deaths. One has to scroll through 115 pages before the identity of the first 10-year-old child appears; the first adult, an 18-year-old girl, only appears on page 215. In March, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), was alarmed by the number of deaths among the youngest, whom he described as ” dizzy ” : “The number of children allegedly killed in just four months in Gaza is greater than the number of children killed in four years in all conflicts around the world. This war is a war against children., Mr. Lazzarini complained. It is a war against their childhood and their future. »
Although the list published by the Ministry of Health on 16 September does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, victims under 18, over 60 and female victims account for more than 60% of the deaths.
Since the start of the war, the reports of the Gaza Strip’s Ministry of Health have been periodically questioned by Israeli authorities, who accuse Hamas of manipulating or even inflating the figures.. The only source confirming the reports is the Palestinian territory’s Ministry of Health, which has been placed de facto under the supervision of the Islamist movement, which has administered the enclave since 2007. The Palestinian Authority, based in Ramallah, also claims responsibility and veracity in bulletins published daily. It pays the salaries of civil servants who collect this data in Gaza and ensures that it controls it. On August 15, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari claimed responsibility for the death of “more than 17,000 terrorists” in the Gaza Strip. No further details. The army did not respond to requests for comment. WorldIn May, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced for his part “the death of 14,000 terrorists and probably 16,000 civilians ».
You have 34.33% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
