In the six-month update on the human rights situation in Gaza, the OHCHR confirmed that, of the 8,119 fatalities it has verified out of more than 34,500 reported deaths, a staggering 70 percent were women and children.
The OHCHR warned that this trend reflects a wider pattern of Israeli violence, with entire families bearing the brunt of airstrikes and artillery on crowded residential areas.
"Many of these deaths occurred in strikes on residential buildings, a key feature of this escalation, where civilians—especially women and children—have borne the brunt," the OHCHR said, underlining that the use of weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated areas has been a major factor in the high civilian death toll.
Of the verified fatalities, 7,607 people were killed in their homes or similar buildings. Among them, 44 percent were children, 26 percent were women, and 30 percent were men. The OHCHR noted that the youngest verified victim was a one-day-old baby, while the oldest was a 97-year-old woman.
A confirmation of a genocide
In January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a historic ruling which concluded that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Israel was committing acts of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and stipulated several provisional directives aimed at preventing further harm to the Palestinian population and ensuring Israel's compliance with the Genocide Convention.
The top UN court directives placed an obligation on Israel to actively take preventive measures to ensure the safety and well-being of the Palestinian population and prevent acts falling within the scope of Article II of the Genocide Convention.
The provision of Article II defines acts of genocide as killing members of a particular group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
To this day, Israel has failed to comply with the ICJ ruling and has continued to escalate its assault on Gaza, especially in the north of the territory, where it has imposed a siege leading health workers to describe the situation as a "genocide within a genocide."
Fifteen UN and humanitarian organisations have warned that north Gaza's entire population was at "imminent risk" of death describing the unfolding humanitarian crisis as "apocalyptic."
"The entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence...humanitarian relief must be facilitated" while hospitals "should not turn into battlegrounds," they stressed.
The statement was signed by the heads of the UN humanitarian, health, food, rights, migration, refugee, development, children and women's agencies, among others.
Strikes on residential areas
The OHCHR report also highlighted that nearly 35 percent of Gaza’s households were already multigenerational before the war. Since the war began, many families have crowded together in already overcrowded homes.
"The nature of these attacks, and their targets—residential buildings—shows a staggering disregard for civilian lives," the OHCHR said. "The very young, including babies, have been killed alongside older generations, suggesting that these attacks have inflicted massive civilian harm without sufficient care or distinction between combatants and non-combatants."
Among the youngest victims, children aged 5 to 9 years, 10 to 14 years, and babies under 4 years old were the most represented in the verified fatalities. The OHCHR’s report also showed that the death toll affected both men and women in roughly equal numbers, with 26 percent of the dead being women and 30 percent men.
The report raised serious misgivings about the Israeli army’s adherence to international humanitarian law (IHL), warning that attacks on residential buildings appear to violate the principle of distinction, which prohibits targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure.
War crimes and IHL violations
The UN human rights office was clear in its condemnation, saying the ongoing attacks could amount to war crimes.
"Intentionally directing attacks against civilians, or carrying out strikes with the knowledge that they will cause excessive civilian harm, is a war crime," the OHCHR said, stressing that IHL requires all feasible precautions to minimize civilian casualties, especially when attacking civilian infrastructure like homes.
"Constant care, including all feasible precautions in attack, must be taken to spare the civilian population," the OHCHR continued, citing IHL’s prohibition on the targeted killing of civilians.
Despite growing evidence of widespread civilian suffering, the OHCHR said Israel has continued these strikes without adequate precautions, suggesting an "apparent indifference" to the death toll and suffering of Gaza’s civilian population.
Civilian toll likely much higher
The OHCHR also cautioned that the actual death toll may be much higher than reported, given the challenges in verifying fatalities during the Israeli war on Gaza. With many areas still inaccessible due to intense Israeli bombardment it is likely the true scale of the devastation is far greater than currently acknowledged.
"The levels of death and injury in Gaza since 7 October 2023 are likely to be much higher than currently reported," the OHCHR said.
Gaza's health ministry says Israel has killed at least 43,469 people and injured more than 100,000 others in its genocidal war on the territory since October last year.
Meanwhile, nearly 100 percent of Gaza's population has been plunged into poverty and 80 percent or 1.9 million people of the 2.4 million population have been internally displaced, according to UN figures.
The OHCHR has called for an urgent review of Israel’s actions under IHL, as well as a more comprehensive response to the mounting humanitarian crisis.
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