More than 5,100 civilians were killed during the first month of the war, making it the deadliest month ever recorded by the conflict monitor.
The first month of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza inflicted the greatest toll on civilians of any conflict in the 21st century, according to Airwars research.
More than 5,100 civilian deaths were recorded during the first month of Israel’s war on Gaza, the conflict monitor said in its latest report published last week, adding that it was by far the most devastating period for civilians it had ever recorded.
The number was almost four times that of civilian deaths recorded in March 2017 during the battle against the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq’s Mosul, which before the current war in Gaza was the deadliest month for civilians monitored by Airwars.
“By almost every metric, the harm to civilians from the first month of the Israeli campaign in Gaza is incomparable with any 21st-century air campaign. It is by far the most intense, destructive, and fatal conflict for civilians that Airwars has ever documented,” the report said.
The data used for the report encompasses the 25-day period between 7 October and 1 November and is based on the analysis of more than 600 incidents of civilian harm.
Airwars said the figures were conservative and were expected to grow when an additional 200 incidents were included in the final analysis.
Official figures put the total death toll in Gaza during the 14-month conflict at more than 45,000 though other estimates put the figure sharply higher.
In July a group of American medical workers said that the figure had likely surpassed 92,000 while doctors writing in the Lancet medical journal estimated in May that the number of direct and indirect deaths had reached 186,000.
Almost the entire population of 2.2 million people have been displaced by the conflict, many of them multiple times.
The conflict was particularly devastating for women and children, who accounted for more than 60 percent of the civilian deaths recorded by Airwars.
At least 1,900 children were killed in Israeli airstrikes during the first month of the war. This is almost seven times higher than the previous record for the number of children killed in a single month and was almost equal to the number of child fatalities across the whole of 2016 in Syria.
A minimum of 1,213 women were killed during the month, more than six times the number killed over the four-month battle of Raqqa in 2016.
Related
Gaza: Israel bombs another UN school as malnutrition cases soar
MENA
The New Arab Staff
The number of bombs dropped on Gaza last October also exceeded that of any modern conflict, Airwars said.
The Israeli army reported it used 6,000 munitions in the first week of the conflict, equivalent to more than 850 per day, and far exceeding the previous record of 500 in Syria’s Raqqa in 2016.
US intelligence has assessed that Israel dropped 29,000 bombs during the first three months of the conflict, almost half of which were unguided.
Israel’s military operations have damaged or destroyed two-thirds of all buildings in Gaza and brought its healthcare system to the brink of collapse.
The brutality of Israel’s onslaught has all but rendered it an international pariah, with the country preparing to fight genocide charges at the International Court of Justice and its prime minister and former defence minister accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
Amnesty International earlier this month became the latest organisation to accuse Israel of committing genocide in a report linking its military conduct to statements made by its leadership it said were incitements to genocide.
Efforts to end the conflict have accelerated in recent days, with the US, Qatar and Egypt holding talks in a bid to break the deadlocked ceasefire talks. The UN General Assembly renewed its call for an immediate ceasefire last week.
