Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says 32 killed in 48 hours

Palestinians gather to receive aid food being distributed along the roadside at the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on January 11, 2025. [AFP]

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Saturday that 32 people were killed in the Palestinian territory over the past 48 hours, taking the overall death toll to 46,537.

The ministry said at least 109,571 people have been wounded in more than 15 months of war between Israel and Hamas, triggered by the Palestinian group's October 7, 2023 attack.

The ministry of health added 499 deaths to its death toll on Saturday, specifying they have now completed the data and confirmed identities on files whose information was incomplete.

A source in the ministry's data collection department told AFP that all the 499 additional deaths were from the past several months.

The number of dead in Gaza has become a matter of bitter debate since Israel launched its military campaign against Hamas in response to the Palestinian militant group's unprecedented attack last year.

Israeli authorities have repeatedly questioned the credibility of the Gaza health ministry's figures.

But a study published Friday by British medical journal The Lancet estimated that the death toll in Gaza during the first nine months of the Israel-Hamas war was around 40 percent higher than recorded by the health ministry.

The new peer-reviewed study used data from the ministry, an online survey and social media obituaries, but only counted deaths from traumatic injuries. It did not include those from a lack of health care or food, or the thousands of missing believed to be buried under rubble.

The UN considers the Gaza health ministry's numbers to be reliable.