Gaza’s death toll is double that of two years in Ukraine

Experts said civilians were being killed in Gaza even more rapidly than in the bloodiest moments of US-led attacks in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, which were themselves widely criticised by human rights groups. 

They noted that the casualty figures emerging from Gaza indicate that the “death rate” during the war initiated by Israel is unprecedented in this century.

A review of historical conflicts and discussions with weapons experts suggest that the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip is “different” as highlighted in a report by the New York Times.

The report also compared the numbers of casualties in Gaza with the numbers of Ukrainian victims during the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. 

According to UN estimates, the number of women and children killed in Gaza is more than double the number reported in Ukraine nearly two years after the Russian attacks.

The number of women and children killed in Gaza since the start of the Israeli assault last month is about 12,400 civilians, the documented number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, who were killed by the United States and its allies over a span of nearly 20 years of conflict, according to a report by Nita C. Crawford, co-director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University.

“It’s beyond anything I’ve seen in my career,” said Mark Garlasko, a military adviser to the Dutch organization PAX and a former senior intelligence analyst at the Pentagon. “If we want a historical comparison of so many large bombs in such a small area, we might have to go back to Vietnam, or World War II.

Researchers say the rate of deaths reported in Gaza during the Israeli bombing has been exceptionally high.  

They also found that, the bombs used in Gaza are larger than those used by the United States when it was fighting ISIS in cities like Mosul and Raqqa and are more consistent with targeting underground infrastructure such as tunnels, said Brian Kastner, Amnesty International’s weapons investigator and former investigator. 

He added, “not only is Gaza small compared to conflict zones such as Iraq, Afghanistan, or Ukraine, but the Strip is completely besieged, providing civilians with few, if any, safe places to flee.”