Gaza, three years on: 80% of structures damaged, 1,467 dead during the truce

Three years after the attack of October 7, 2023, figures measuring the state of the truce in force in Gaza have emerged: widespread destruction and a casualty count that continues to be updated.

According to the data collected, around 80% of the structures in the Gaza Strip are now damaged. Most residents have been displaced, forced to live in an area amounting to less than half of the original territory of the Strip. This figure concerns buildings as a whole — it does not distinguish between civilian housing and other structures — and is accompanied by the displacement of the population into an increasingly shrinking space compared to the original borders.

The truce, in force for almost a year, has not entirely halted hostilities: Israeli attacks continue despite the ceasefire having largely held. The casualty count during the truce period reflects the fragility of this balance. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 1,467 people have been killed in the Strip since the agreement came into force — a figure covering the entire period since the truce was signed, indicating that the agreement has reduced, but not eliminated, the use of force in the territory.

On the opposite side, an Israeli military spokesperson reports four soldiers killed in the same period. This figure measures the losses suffered by the Israeli armed forces during the truce, of a different nature from the overall count provided by Gaza’s Ministry of Health: on one hand, the tally of Palestinian casualties in the Strip, on the other, that of soldiers fallen on the Israeli front. Placed side by side, without the available excerpts indicating a shared verification mechanism between the two sources, these figures nonetheless convey the measure of an agreement that has lowered the intensity of the conflict compared to the previous phase without ending it.

The news currently comes from a single source (NBC News, which reports data from Gaza’s Ministry of Health and statements from an Israeli military spokesperson); no independent confirmation of these figures is currently available.

Three years after the attack of October 7, 2023, the balance emerging from the two counts — the Palestinian one on overall casualties in the Strip and the Israeli one on fallen soldiers — confirms that the truce has held for almost a year without, however, completely stopping hostilities: 1,467 dead in Gaza and four Israeli soldiers killed, in a territory where 80% of structures are damaged.