Gaza City, February 3 (RHC)-- The government media office in the Gaza Strip has raised to 61,709 the death toll from Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged territory.

Salama Marouf, the media office’s head, released the figure on Sunday by adding 14,222 who are missing and now presumed dead to 47,487 bodies that were already transferred to hospitals.  Speaking to reporters at Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital, he said the victims included 17,881 children, among them 214 newborn babies.

He also noted that over 38,000 Palestinian children were orphaned by the Israeli offensive against Gaza.  “More than 6,000 Palestinians were detained by the Israeli forces and dozens of them were tortured to death in detention,” he added.  “Over 2 million Palestinians were forcibly displaced, with many forced to relocate more than 25 times amid absence of essential services.”

Meanwhile, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned that the needs in Gaza are “immense.”  “Any hope of recovery will require a full-scale humanitarian response with all agencies coming together,” it said in an X post.

Turkey’s Anadolu Agency reported that teams from the Palestinian Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip have reportedly removed the remains of 20 Palestinians killed by Israel during its genocide in the blockaded territory.

The bodies were recovered from piles of sand in an empty land near a destroyed shelter school in the northern Gaza town of Sheikh Zayed, according to the report.
Some bodies were found in a decomposed and dismembered state, while others were reduced to a few bones.

Israel unleashed its bloody Gaza onslaught on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

Israel was forced to agree to a Gaza ceasefire after the regime failed to achieve its objectives in the besieged territory during a 15-month-long genocidal war.

The Tel Aviv regime failed to achieve its declared objectives of freeing captives and eliminating Hamas despite killing a shocking number of Palestinians.  It accepted Hamas’s longstanding negotiation terms under the Gaza truce, which began on January 19th.

Israel has taken effect after deadly strikes by the usurping regime on the Gaza Strip.  Since then, Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement several times.

A Palestinian citizen was killed on Sunday evening by the bullets of the occupation forces in the town of al-Shawka, east of Rafah city, south of the Gaza Strip.  Additionally, a Palestinian woman succumbed to injuries she suffered after 
the regime’s military bombed her family’s house in Rafah.

A Palestinian girl also died of her wounds sustained during the Israeli aggression against Gaza.