JERUSALEM/GAZA CITY: The population of Gaza has fallen 6 per cent since the Israeli invasion began nearly 15 months ago as about 100,000 Palestinians left the enclave while more than 55,000 are presumed dead, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).

Around 45,500 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, have been killed since the conflict began but another 11,000 are missing, the bureau said, citing numbers from the Palestinian health ministry.

As such, the population of Gaza has declined by about 160,000 during the course of the conflict to 2.1 million, with more than a million or 47pc of the total children under the age of 18, the PCBS said.

It added that Israel has “raged a brutal aggression against Gaza targeting all kinds of life there; humans, buildings and vital infrastructure... entire families were erased from the civil register. There are catastrophic human and material losses.” Israel’s foreign ministry said the PCBS data was “fabricated, inflated, and manipulated in order to vilify Israel”.

Over 45,500 Palestinians, half of them women and children, have been killed during Israeli invasion

Israel has faced accusations of genocide in Gaza because of the scale of death and destruction.

The PCBS said some 22pc of Gaza’s population currently faces catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, according to the criteria of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global monitor. Included in that 22pc are some 3,500 children at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of food, the bureau said.

Babies die from winter cold

Yahya al-Batran clutched the tiny clothes of his dead newborn son Jumaa, just days after the baby died from the cold in their tent in conflict-stricken Gaza. “We are watching our children die before our eyes,” said the 44-year-old.

Their baby was one of the seven children who died from the cold within the span of a week, the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry said on Monday. “We fled the bombing from Beit Lahia, only for them to die from the cold here?” said the child’s mother Noura al-Batran, referring to their hometown in northern Gaza.

The 38-year-old is still recovering from giving birth prematurely to Jumaa and his surviving twin brother, Ali, who is being treated in an intensive care unit at a hospital in southern Gaza.

Completely destitute and repeatedly displaced by the Israel-Hamas conflict, the Batran family live in a makeshift tent in Deir el-Balah made of worn-out blankets and fabric.

Like hundreds of others now living in a date palm orchard, they have struggled to keep warm and dry amid heavy rains and temperatures that have dropped as low as eight degrees Celsius.

“We don’t have enough blankets or suitable clothing. I saw my baby start to freeze, his skin turned blue and then he died,” she cried.

Published in Dawn, January 2nd, 2025