Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll at 40,223

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Wednesday that at least 40,223 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory in more than 10 months of war with Israel.

The toll includes 50 deaths in the past 24 hours, according to ministry figures, which also listed 92,981 people as wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began on October 7.

Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, also known as UNRWA, told AFP from Gaza that in war-ravaged Gaza, death appears to be the "only certainty" for 2.4 million Palestinians with no way to escape Israel's relentless bombardment, a UN official said Tuesday, recounting the growing desperation across the territory.

"It does feel like people are waiting for death. Death seems to be the only certainty in this situation."

For the past two weeks, Wateridge has been in the Gaza Strip, witnessing the humanitarian crisis, fear of death and spread of disease as the war rages on.

"Nowhere in the Gaza Strip is safe, absolutely nowhere is safe. It's absolutely devastating," Wateridge said from the Nuseirat area of central Gaza -- a regular target of Israel's aerial assaults.

Since fighting broke out in October, Israeli forces have pounded the besieged territory from the air, land and sea, reducing much of it to rubble.

Now in its eleventh month, the war has created an acute humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom have been displaced several times, running out of basic food and clean drinking water.

Meanwhile, Israel killed a senior member of the Palestinian movement in Lebanon on Wednesday, accusing him of orchestrating attacks in the West Bank. 

In response, the Fatah party accused Israel of seeking to "ignite a regional war".

Khalil Maqdah was killed in a strike on his car in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, according to Fatah and a Lebanese security source.

The Israeli military said an air force "aircraft struck the terrorist Khalil Hussein Khalil Al-Maqdah in the area of Sidon in southern Lebanon."

The military said Maqdah was the brother of Mounir Maqdah, who heads the Lebanese branch of Fatah's armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, and accused them both of "directing terror attacks and smuggling weapons" to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The attack marks the first such reported attack on a senior member of Fatah, the movement led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in more than 10 months of cross-border clashes between Israel and Lebanon's Hiezbollah movement following the Gaza war.

Fatah said Maqdah had been killed "in a cowardly assassination carried out by ... Zionist (Israeli) warplanes on Sidon", describing him as "one of the leaders" of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in Lebanon, the movement's armed wing.

In a statement, it said Maqdah had "a central role" in "supporting the Palestinian people and its resistance" during the Gaza war and an "important role in supporting resistance cells" for years in the West Bank.