Tel Aviv — Israeli military strikes kill more than 600 people Gaza Strip in the first 10 days of 2025, bringing the death toll to more than 46,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory, and a new estimate suggests that ‘it could be much higher. Israel started the war after Hamas carried out an unprecedented terrorist attack, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage.
The total death toll in Gaza represents just over 2% of the population of this small enclave, with an average of around 3,000 people killed each month, or 100 killed each day since Hamas-led terrorists attacked southern Israel 15 months ago.
Israel has rejected the figures provided by Palestinian officials and blames Hamas for all deaths in Gaza, accusing the group of using civilians as human shields. But a new study published in the medical journal The Lancet suggests that the figure provided by Gaza’s health ministry for the first nine months of the war may have been underestimated by as much as 40%.
Gaza death toll underestimated, Lancet study finds
From the start of the war until June 30, 2024, Gaza’s health ministry said just under 38,000 people had been killed by traumatic injuries, but the Lancet estimate — published in a journal peer-reviewed study based on data from health authorities, social media obituaries and an online survey, more than 64,000 people had been killed during that period.
CBS News is unable to independently verify these figures, and Israeli authorities have blocked Western journalists from entering Gaza to do independent reporting since the start of the war.
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The Lancet noted that its estimate does not include the thousands more people believed to still be buried under rubble, nor those who died due to lack of access to food, water or medical care during the war.
“I’m broken inside after losing my family,” Mahmoud Sukkar, 21, told the local CBS News team in Gaza. All 17 members of his family were killed, including his mother, father and twin brother, when an Israeli strike hit their home in Gaza City during the first month of the war.
Sukkar, the only survivor, now lives alone in a tent camp in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.
“I have no wishes,” Sukkar said. “I want to visit my family’s graves. My only wish is to visit their graves.”
Israel continues to attack Houthis in Yemen
As Israel continues its strikes against Hamas remnants, the Israeli military said Friday that its naval and air forces had struck several Houthi rebel targets on the west coast and interior of Yemen, including ports and a power station.
The Houthis, like Hamas, are backed by Iran and have launched repeated missile and drone attacks against commercial ships, US and Israeli military vessels and on Israeli territory in support of their allies since the start of the war in Gaza. The United States has also carried out numerous strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen over the past year.
“The Houthi terrorist regime is a central part of the Iranian terrorist axis, and its attacks on ships and international shipping routes continue to destabilize the region and the world as a whole,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
“As we promised, the Houthis are paying and will continue to pay a heavy price for their aggression against us,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a separate statement.
Progress, but no progress in ceasefire talks
Meanwhile, in Doha, Qatar, U.S. and Arab negotiators made “real progress” this week toward an agreement between Israel and Hamas for a ceasefire and the release of hostages in the final days of the war. The Biden administration, the US president said on Thursday, but it did not seem enough to announce a major breakthrough or to justify the return of high-level officials to the region.
“We are making real progress, I met with the negotiators today,” Mr. Biden told reporters at the White House. “I’m still hopeful that we can have a prisoner exchange. It’s Hamas that’s currently standing in the way of that exchange, but I think we might be able to make it happen, we have to do it.”
U.S. envoys Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk were working to iron out the technical details of a proposal, but Israeli intelligence chief David Barnea did not travel to Doha this week as Israeli media reported, and nothing only indicates that CIA chief William Burns was also in Qatar. The two men joined the negotiations on several occasions when there was hope of a possible agreement.
An apparent sticking point in the negotiations has been the unconfirmed situation of 34 Israeli hostages in Gaza who were included in a document that Hamas resurfaced this week after it was first published last summer. Israel has demanded to know who on the list is still alive and who is dead. Hamas demanded a four-day ceasefire to contact its militant network across Gaza to confirm the condition of the hostages, saying ongoing operations by Israel prevented the group from assessing otherwise.
Families and friends of the hostages have regularly demonstrated in Israel to demand that Netanyahu’s government strike a deal to bring them all home at once. Israeli officials estimate that around 100 hostages are still being held by Hamas or its allies in Gaza, although at least 30 are believed to be dead.
If a ceasefire takes shape, the first phase would involve an exchange of hostages for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, as well as an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza.
But another major obstacle is Hamas’ constant demand that Israeli forces completely withdraw from the Gaza Strip – something Israel has so far refused to accept.
Some Israelis and Palestinians hope for “help from Donald Trump”
If a deal isn’t reached by President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, some Israelis — and Palestinians — hope it will bring a needed change to the negotiations, potentially for the better.
“He is unpredictable and courageous,” Ilay David, brother of hostage Eyvatar David, 24, told CBS News at a rally in Jerusalem Friday afternoon. “We need to think outside the box, and Trump can make that change.”
“Donald Trump is known for being a businessman first and foremost,” said Ameen Abu Fkheida, a 19-year-old Palestinian cybersecurity student at Birzeit University in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “I don’t think he’ll be a friend [of Palestinians]but I think there will be some sort of help from Donald Trump regarding the Gaza case, which could probably be a ceasefire or a prisoner exchange or something to defuse the current situation in Gaza . »
Ramy Inocencio
