Gaza’s Health Ministry said Tuesday that over the previous 48-hour period, hospitals in the Strip received 48 more bodies of Palestinians who were killed by “Israeli aggression,” raising the recorded death toll.
The Health Ministry said 37 of the bodies were “recovered,” meaning they were killed before the ceasefire went into effect, and that 11 of the bodies were new fatalities.
The circumstances of the 11 deaths are unclear. On Monday, at least two Palestinians, including a five-year-old girl, were killed by Israeli forces. The Israeli military has frequently violated the ceasefire, always claiming that its forces opened fire at some sort of “threat.”
On Tuesday, Israeli troops accidentally killed an Israeli contractor in Gaza. According to Haaretz, the contractor was unarmed and dressed in civilian clothes and approaching Israeli soldiers when he was shot.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said that the 48 bodies brought its death toll since October 2023 to 47,354, a number that’s considered a significant undercount. A study published by The Lancet said the true death toll as of October 2024 was likely over 70,000, which only includes Palestinians killed by violence, not indirect deaths caused by the US-backed Israeli siege.
Gaza rescue workers have said at least 10,000 bodies are under the rubble in Gaza, and Palestinians have just begun returning to the destroyed cities of the north, where many corpses are buried. The UN said on Tuesday that more than 370,000 Palestinians have returned to the north since they were allowed to make the trip on Monday.