Smoke billowed over Gaza City on September 5, 2025, as another Israeli airstrike collapsed a residential building, underscoring the relentless violence that has gripped the besieged enclave for nearly two years. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, the Palestinian death toll has now surpassed 64,300 since October 2023, with more than 69 bodies brought to hospitals in the 24 hours leading up to Friday. The scale of devastation and loss has prompted international outrage, stoked fierce debate among media watchdogs, and intensified scrutiny of how the crisis is being reported worldwide.
In a grim tally released Friday, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that 162,005 people have been injured since the conflict began. The Ministry’s figures reveal the staggering human cost: nearly half of those killed are women and children—19,424 children and 10,138 women. Tragically, some 15,000 people remain missing, presumed trapped beneath the rubble of destroyed neighborhoods. The Ministry also stated, “A child is killed every 52 minutes due to Israel’s genocidal war across the blockaded Palestinian territory.”
As the war enters its 700th day, the humanitarian situation in Gaza has deteriorated to levels unseen in recent history. Since March 2, 2025, all Gaza border crossings have been completely closed by Israeli forces, pushing the territory’s 2.1 million residents into famine. A UN-backed food security assessment has confirmed famine in northern Gaza and warns that it is likely to spread further south by the end of this month. The Ministry reported that approximately 1.97 million people face acute food insecurity, including 641,000 at famine levels. “At least 370 people have died of malnutrition in 2025, two-thirds of them adults, as families waste away in tent camps and destroyed neighborhoods,” the Ministry said.
Three more Palestinians died of malnutrition and starvation in the last 24 hours, bringing the famine-linked death toll since October 2023 to 376, including 134 children. Water and medical resources have been systematically targeted: all 38 hospitals and 157 clinics in Gaza have suffered attacks, and only 16 hospitals remain partially functional. Bed occupancy has reached nearly 200%, with just 1,685 beds available for the entire population—less than half the number available in 2022. Gaza’s daily water share has plummeted from 84.6 liters per person before the war to just 5 liters today, and more than half its wells have been destroyed.
The Ministry describes the situation as genocide, characterized by the systematic destruction of food, water, hospitals, and family life. “Gaza’s children, mothers, and future generations are being deliberately erased,” the Ministry stated. Maternal mortality has surged from 17 per 100,000 live births in 2022 to 145 in 2024. The toll on women is equally harrowing: 8,990 mothers and 7,962 women of reproductive age have been killed, and over 3,300 forced abortions have occurred. The Ministry also noted that 56,320 children have been orphaned and more than 40,000 injured.
The violence has not spared those seeking help. In the past 24 hours alone, six Palestinians were killed and over 190 wounded by Israeli army fire while attempting to access US-backed humanitarian aid. Since late May, 2,362 people have been killed and over 17,434 wounded while seeking aid around US-run centers, highlighting the peril faced even by those trying to survive the siege. Hundreds of thousands more have been displaced amid the widespread destruction, and the humanitarian crisis deepens by the day.
Israel’s military has defended its actions, claiming in a statement on Friday that the multi-story building struck in Gaza City housed infrastructure belonging to the Hamas resistance movement. The Israeli forces now claim control over 40 percent of the city and have signaled plans to target additional high-rise buildings as they escalate their campaign to seize control of Gaza City. Assaults on residential homes and refugee camps have intensified, flattening entire neighborhoods and pushing Gaza into the severest phase of famine, according to rights groups and humanitarian agencies.
International response to the crisis has been mixed, but a significant development came on August 31, 2025, when the International Association of Genocide Scholars declared that Israel’s actions in Gaza met the legal definition of genocide. The New York Times reported, “On Monday, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, a leading group of academic experts on the topic, declared that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza met the legal definition of genocide.” The Israeli foreign ministry, however, dismissed the resolution. A spokesperson called it “an embarrassment to the legal profession,” and further claimed it was “entirely based on Hamas’ campaign of lies and the laundering of those lies by others.”
Media coverage of the conflict, especially by major outlets like The New York Times, has come under intense criticism. According to The Electronic Intifada, the newspaper initially misstated the death toll as 39,000 based on outdated July 2024 data. The Times corrected the figure on September 4, 2025, acknowledging over 60,000 deaths, but even the correction omitted thousands of casualties. The Electronic Intifada noted, “The ministry recently put the figure at more than 60,000 people, not over 39,000,” yet at the time of the original publication, the actual death toll exceeded 63,000. Historian Assal Rad and investigative journalist Laila Al-Arian have both highlighted what they see as the Times’ minimization of genocide and normalization of Palestinian death. Al-Arian wrote, “They’ll be remembered for minimizing genocide, normalizing Palestinian death and whitewashing Israel’s atrocities.”
The media’s framing of the conflict has also drawn fire for its language. In a recent article, The New York Times’ Liam Stack described the war as having started after “the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel, in which roughly 1,200 were killed and 250 more taken hostage.” Critics point out that while the newspaper uses terms like “terror attack,” it avoids referencing Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. The Electronic Intifada reported that Stack did not respond to requests for comment regarding these editorial choices.
As the war in Gaza grinds on, the numbers continue to climb and the humanitarian crisis deepens. With famine spreading, infrastructure in ruins, and tens of thousands dead or missing, the world’s attention turns not just to the conflict itself, but to the way it is being chronicled—and, in some cases, contested—by the international media. The facts on the ground are harrowing, and for Gaza’s residents, every day brings new losses and ever-fading hope for relief.
