Gaza Health Ministry Says More Than 1,000 Killed Since October Ceasefire

Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip have killed 1,005 Palestinians since a ceasefire with Hamas took effect last October, the Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday, underscoring how fragile the truce has remained for the people living inside the enclave.

The territory has seen near-daily strikes since the agreement, the ministry said, along with shelling and gunfire concentrated along the boundary that now divides Gaza into Israeli- and Palestinian-controlled zones. The most recent deaths, officials said, were recorded after a series of Israeli drone strikes in the past few days on towns and refugee camps in central Gaza and in Gaza City.

The October ceasefire, brokered amid intense international pressure, was meant to wind down more than a year of catastrophic fighting that had killed tens of thousands and reduced much of Gaza to rubble. Instead, residents describe a grinding, lower-intensity conflict in which crossing an invisible line, scavenging near the buffer zone, or being caught in a strike aimed at militants can prove fatal.

The Health Ministry's count does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, and Israel says its forces act against fighters who approach Israeli positions or violate the truce's terms. Israeli officials have repeatedly accused Hamas of exploiting the lull to regroup, and the military says many of those killed were armed men operating in restricted areas.

The truce that took hold in October was built around a phased framework — an end to large-scale offensives, the release of hostages and prisoners, and the gradual entry of humanitarian aid — but key questions about Gaza's postwar governance, security and reconstruction were left unresolved. Mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the United States have spent months trying to translate the pause into something more permanent, with limited success.

Aid agencies operating in Gaza say the continued casualties, combined with damaged hospitals and intermittent access for relief convoys, have made recovery nearly impossible in some neighborhoods. Reconstruction has barely begun in the hardest-hit areas, and humanitarian groups warn that the population remains acutely vulnerable to disease, hunger and the next flare-up of violence. Tens of thousands of displaced residents remain in tents and damaged buildings, and clean water and electricity are still scarce across much of the strip.

The new figures are likely to intensify diplomatic friction as mediators try to convert the temporary halt into a durable settlement. For families in Gaza, the statistics describe a daily reality in which the word "ceasefire" has come to mean something far short of peace.