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SvennoJ on 05 October 2025
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The toll of two years of Israeli attacks on Gaza

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has released a fact sheet to mark the two-year anniversary of Israel’s devastating war on Gaza this week.

Here are some key takeaways:

  • Nearly all of Gaza’s residents have been displaced, many multiple times.
  • Nearly 80 percent of all structures are damaged or destroyed across the Gaza Strip.
  • Famine is confirmed in the Gaza governorate and projected to expand in Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis governorates, in central and southern Gaza, respectively.
  • More than 98 percent of Gaza’s cropland has been damaged, left inaccessible, or both.
  • Less than 40 percent of hospitals remain functional, all partially, and there have been at least 790 attacks on health workers, patients, hospitals, and other medical infrastructure.
  • Nearly 92 percent of school buildings will either need full reconstruction or major rehabilitation to be functional again, as 660,000 children are forced out of school.

See more UNRWA’s findings below, particularly related to Israel’s deprivation of water in Gaza:


No let-up in military strikes in Gaza as more Palestinians are displaced

In the past few hours, Israeli forces attacked different areas across the Gaza Strip, especially in Gaza City, where the attacks were concentrated on the eastern parts.

The Bureij neighbourhood and other areas under attack are highly dangerous at the moment, with many Palestinians forced to move to the western parts of Gaza City.

Sources from al-Ahli Hospital tell us that the number of casualties is overwhelming and the doctors are facing many challenges in treating the wounded, especially with the lack of medicine and medical supplies.


‘It’s like a slaughterhouse’

The AFP news agency has collected the harrowing testimony of an Australian doctor who returned earlier this morning from a four-week mission in Gaza.

There are certain things that pictures or footage on global media do not capture, said anaesthetist Saya Aziz. “The things that you didn’t get through the video were the smell, the wailing, the distress of the parents crying, witnessing their children dying, suffering in pain.

“Torn, disintegrated bodies, blood, broken heads, broken arms, chopped limbs – not just chopped, like disintegrated,” she said. “You would never see such scenes in your life, blood everywhere … It’s like a slaughterhouse.”

Palestinian children in Gaza were suffering the most, she continued.

“The hardest has been for the children who are unwell, unconscious, bleeding – you’re having to anaesthetise them knowing they’ve got no surviving family members left,” she said. “Who’s going to tell them, who’s going to look after them?”

 

MSF worker succumbs to shrapnel wounds three days after Israeli attack

Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, has lost another Palestinian staff worker in Gaza to an Israeli attack, the third in fewer than 20 days as Israel continues to kill an unprecedented number of healthcare workers.

Abed El Hameed Qaradaya, 43, was severely wounded on Thursday after Israel struck a street where MSF teams were waiting to go to work at a field hospital in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

“All staff were wearing MSF vests, clearly identifying them as medical humanitarian workers,” the organisation said, which noted that staff member Omar Hayek was killed, and several other people were wounded.