Lancet Puts Gaza Death Toll at 186,000

GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) – Heavy fighting raged in the besieged north of the Gaza Strip on Monday, forcing thousands of Palestinians to pick up their belongings and flee from Gaza City. Israeli tanks and troops moved into the city even as ceasefire mediators Egypt and Qatar prepared to host new truce talks this week.   
Thousands of Palestinians fled heavy battles in Gaza City on Monday, as Israel’s military expanded an evacuation order nine months into its war with Hamas militants.
Israeli troops and tanks pushed into parts of Gaza City, in the besieged territory’s north, and were confronted by Palestinian fighters.
Thousands were on the move again, according to the Civil Defense agency in the territory. Witnesses said messages on loudspeakers urged civilians to leave Gaza City’s Al-Daraj and Al-Tuffah neighborhoods.
AFP photographers saw Palestinians leave on foot, bikes and on donkey carts, carrying their belongings through rubble-strewn streets.
Muhammad Bisan said he had been through “an indescribable night” in Gaza City.
“Planes and artillery are bombing and drones are firing from all directions, and we do not know where to run, right or left,” he told AFP.
Elsewhere in Gaza, AFPTV images showed Palestine Red Crescent members removing a body from the rubble after a strike in Jabalia, another Gaza City district.
Israel’s military reported strikes on targets in the Rafah and Khan Yunis areas of southern Gaza.
The occupying regime’s war on Gaza has martyred at least 38,193 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from the territory’s health ministry.
The toll includes at least 40 deaths over the previous 24 hours, it said.
Diplomatic efforts to halt the fighting aim for an initial six-week ceasefire that would see some captives in Gaza freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, but talks would continue for a comprehensive deal to end the war.
Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office insisted in a statement that “any deal will allow Israel to return and fight until all the goals of the war are achieved”.
The military said Israeli forces were carrying out attacks against Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters in the area of the 

Gaza City headquarters of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
Israel in early January claimed had dismantled Hamas’s “military framework” in northern Gaza, but fighters have since regrouped -- pointing to the difficulty of destroying the group which Netanyahu says is one of the goals.
Gaza’s Civil Defense reported “dozens of martyrs and wounded” across the coastal territory, saying rescuers were unable to reach some areas due to the intense fighting.
A Hamas senior official on Monday accused the Israeli premier of stepping up bombardment in order to derail the latest truce effort.
“Whenever a round of negotiations begins and a breakthrough is within reach, he... escalates the aggression,” the Hamas official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Two separate strikes, on Saturday in the central Nuseirat refugee camp and on Sunday in Gaza City, killed people in schools turned into displacement shelters.
The United Nations estimates 90 percent of Gazans have fled their homes.
Netanyahu’s hard-right political allies have threatened to leave the cabinet if he agrees to stop the genocide. 
 A letter written by experts and published in the British medical journal, the Lancet, estimates that the actual death toll of Palestinians martyred in Gaza could exceed 186,000.
However, the letter emphasized that this figure is likely a dramatic underestimate and does not account for the thousands of people buried under the rubble or for the mounting “indirect” deaths as a result of Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s food distribution, healthcare and sanitation systems.
“The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed healthcare infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population’s inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organizations still active in the Gaza Strip,” the letter said.
The letter estimated that the number of bodies still buried in the rubble is likely to exceed 10,000, as 35 percent of Gaza’ buildings have been destroyed, according to UN data.
Citing the transparency watchdog Airwars, which conducts detailed investigations of incidents of civilian harm in areas of conflict, the names of identifiable victims are often omitted from the ministry’s fatalities lists.
It added that data collection is becoming increasingly difficult for the Gaza health ministry.
The destruction of much of the strip’s infrastructure means it is having to rely on information from media sources and first responders to update its figures.
“This change has inevitably degraded the detailed data recorded previously,” the letter said, adding that the ministry now reports separately the number of unidentified bodies among the total death toll.
The letter urged for an immediate ceasefire and the distribution of humanitarian aid in the strip. It also emphasized the need to accurately record “the scale and nature of suffering” in Gaza.
“Documenting the true scale is crucial for ensuring historical accountability and acknowledging the full cost of the war. It is also a legal requirement,” it said.