Nearly 70% of Gaza war dead are women and children, UN says

Approximately 44% of verified victims were children and 26% were women, according to the UN.

The UN Human Rights Office has criticized the high civilian toll in the Gaza conflict, reporting that nearly 70% of verified casualties over a six-month period were women and children. The UN attributes this primarily to the use of wide-area weapons by Israel in densely populated areas, though some casualties may have resulted from misfired projectiles by Palestinian armed groups.

The report highlights an "unprecedented" scale of potential international law violations, raising concerns about possible war crimes. Israel has previously stated that it targets Hamas and uses precision weapons to minimize civilian harm. 

The UN's analysis verified 8,119 deaths in Gaza between November 2023 and April 2024, noting that 44% of these were children and 26% women, with a significant number being young children. Around 80% of casualties occurred in residential areas, prompting the UN to question what it called an "apparent indifference" to civilian lives.

UN Condemns Civilian Toll and Violations of Humanitarian Law in Gaza

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, whose numbers the UN deems reliable, reports over 43,300 deaths across the past 13 months, including a high percentage of children. UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk condemned this scale of civilian harm, attributing it to failures to uphold key principles of international humanitarian law, such as distinctions between combatants and civilians, proportionality, and precaution.

The report criticizes both sides for their conduct: while Palestinian armed groups have used densely populated areas and indiscriminate weaponry, the IDF has reportedly caused large-scale infrastructure destruction, leaving survivors injured, displaced, and deprived of basic resources. Conditions are particularly dire in northern Gaza, where the UN noted a severe lack of food and supplies due to the Israeli ground offensive.

International aid organizations have described devastation across Gaza, with Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council likening the destruction to scenes from World War II. He emphasized the toll on women and children, calling the situation "beyond belief."

Israel's current operations follow Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,200 Israelis and the abduction of 251 hostages.