Palestinian death toll passes 64,000, health officials say, as Israel
and Hamas dig in on demands
[September 05, 2025]
By WAFAA SHURAFA, KAREEM CHEHAYEB and JULIA FRANKEL
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — More than 64,000 Palestinians have been
killed in the nearly two-year war in the Gaza Strip, local health
officials said Thursday, as Hamas and Israel reiterated their
incompatible demands for ending the fighting sparked by the militant
group’s 2023 attack.
Israeli strikes killed 28 people, mostly women and children, overnight
and into Thursday, according to hospitals, as Israel pressed ahead with
its offensive in famine-stricken Gaza City. Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin, the
military spokesman, said Israeli forces control 40% of the city and that
the operation would expand "in the coming days.”
In the occupied West Bank, Israelis established a new settlement in a
Palestinian city, according to an anti-settlement monitoring group.
The latest strikes came as Israeli troops were operating in parts of
Gaza City with plans to take over all of it. The most populous
Palestinian city is home to around a million people many of whom have
already been displaced multiple times.
Shifa Hospital in Gaza City received 25 bodies, including nine children
and six women, after Israeli strikes hit tents housing displaced people,
according to hospital records. Among those killed was a 10-day-old baby.
Another three people were killed in southern Gaza, according to Nasser
Hospital in Khan Younis.
Maha Afana said the strikes woke her up in the middle of the night as
she slept in a tent in Gaza City with her children. When she checked on
them she found the bodies of her son and daughter, drenched with blood.
“I started screaming,” she said.
Associated Press footage of the aftermath showed charred tents and
debris. The sound of further Israeli bombardment echoed in the
background.
“What did those children do to the state of Israel? They didn’t carry a
knife or artillery. They were just sleeping,” said Hayam Basous, who
lost a relative in the strike.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which says it
only targets militants and tries to avoid harming civilians. It blames
civilian deaths on Hamas, saying militants are entrenched in
densely-populated areas.
Death toll rises
Gaza’s Health Ministry said that 64,231 Palestinians have been killed
since the start of the war. The latest update includes around 400 who
were presumed missing but whose deaths it says have been confirmed.
The ministry doesn't say how many of those killed in the war were
militants or civilians. It says women and children make up around half
the dead.
The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical
professionals. Its figures are seen as a reliable estimate of wartime
deaths by U.N. agencies and many independent experts. Israel has
disputed them without providing its own toll.
Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and
abducted 251 people in their attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Most have since been released in ceasefires or other agreements.
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Palestinians carry the body of a person killed in an Israeli army
strike, at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. (AP
Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
No visible progress in ceasefire efforts
Hamas released a statement late Wednesday saying that it was open to
returning all 48 hostages it still holds — around 20 of them
believed by Israel to be alive — in exchange for Palestinian
prisoners, a lasting ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces
from all of Gaza, the opening of border crossings and a start to the
daunting challenge of rebuilding Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office dismissed the
offer as “spin” and said that the war would continue until all the
hostages are returned, Hamas is disarmed and Israel has full
security control of the territory, with civilian administration
delegated to others.
Talks on a temporary ceasefire that would have seen some of the
hostages returned broke down last month when U.S. Middle East envoy
Steve Witkoff walked away, blaming Hamas. The militant group later
accepted a proposal that Hamas and Arab mediators said was almost
identical to an earlier one accepted by Israel, but there’s been no
public indication that talks have resumed.
Israel and the U.S. have recently hinted at pursuing a comprehensive
deal in which all the remaining hostages would be released at once.
New settlement in West Bank city
An anti-settlement watchdog group said Israelis have established a
new settlement in the heart of the Palestinian city of Hebron, in
the occupied West Bank.
Peace Now says the government-backed settlers took over a building
on a main thoroughfare used by Palestinians to access the Old City,
where hundreds of hardline settlers already live in a decades-old
settlement guarded by Israeli troops adjacent to Palestinian homes.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli government.
Hebron’s Old City is home to a major holy site revered by Jews and
Muslims, where the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and
their wives, are believed to be buried. It has often been the scene
of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem,
in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories
for a future state and – along with most of the international
community – view settlements as illegal and an obstacle to peace.
“The goal of establishing a settlement in the heart of Hebron’s
casbah is to seize new areas of the city and displace Palestinians
from them, similar to what was done in the city center around the
existing settlements,” Peace Now said.
“The settlement in Hebron is the ugliest face of Israeli control in
the territories. Nowhere else in the West Bank is apartheid so
blatant,” it said.
___
Kareem Chehayeb reported from Beirut and Frankel from Jerusalem.
Associated Press writer Fatma Khaled in Cairo contributed.
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