Israel’s prime minister said on a podcast that almost half of those killed in the Gaza war are Hamas fighters, again addressing a civilian toll that has sparked global outrage. Benjamin Netanyahu maintained the overall toll is lower than that given by authorities in the Palestinian territory.
According to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, at least 35,091 people have been killed in the territory during more than seven months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
Last week, the United Nations changed its estimate of the number of women and children believed to be among the civilians killed in the Palestinian territory, shifting from figures previously provided by the Hamas government in Gaza to numbers stated by the enclave’s health ministry.
According to the ministry’s figures, which have been cited by the U.N. since May 10, about 13,000 women and children have been killed in Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7, when Israel launched its strikes against Hamas in retaliation for the group’s terrorist attack.
Speaking Sunday on the “Call Me Back” podcast, Netanyahu said the death toll in Gaza was around 30,000, and that Hamas fighters accounted for nearly half of that toll. He insisted to podcaster Dan Senor that Israel had “been able to keep the ratio of civilians to combatants killed… (to) a ratio of about one to one.””Fourteen thousand have been killed, combatants, and probably around 16,000 civilians have been killed,” he said.
Read more at CBSnews.com
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