More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the territory's Health Ministry, a toll that has continued to rise despite a ceasefire that took effect in October 2025 and that President Donald Trump declared had ended the conflict. The ministry, whose figures are regarded as broadly reliable by the United Nations and many international agencies, said the dead include more than 20,000 children and that recorded injuries exceed 170,000.
The ceasefire has not stopped the killing. At least 1,005 Palestinians have died from Israeli fire in the roughly eight months since the truce was reached, the Health Ministry says, in what it describes as near-daily strikes, shelling and gunfire concentrated along the boundary that now divides the enclave. Israel says its operations target militants who violate the agreement or approach its forces; it does not dispute that fighting has continued.
Among the recent dead are civilians, children and journalists. A strike in central Gaza in late June killed six people, including two children and a cameraman working for the broadcaster Al Jazeera, according to Palestinian health officials — one of a series of incidents that have kept the monthly casualty count elevated long after the formal end of major combat operations.
Territory, as much as casualties, defines the current phase. The Gaza Strip is split along what is known as the 'yellow line,' with roughly 58 percent of the enclave under full Israeli military control and Palestinians pushed into the remaining 42 percent, much of it reduced to rubble. The division has hardened into a de facto partition, with movement across the line restricted and dangerous.
The October 2025 ceasefire was brokered as a framework to halt the fighting, exchange hostages and detainees, and open the way to reconstruction and a longer-term political settlement. In practice, its core provisions have been only partially honored, and monitoring groups have catalogued thousands of incidents they characterize as violations of the truce since it began.
Humanitarian conditions remain dire. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are concentrated in tent camps such as the one at Muwasi, where strikes have repeatedly caused casualties, and aid agencies report that access and supplies fall far short of needs across a territory whose housing, hospitals and water systems have been devastated.
The persistence of the violence underscores how fragile a declared peace can be. For Palestinians in Gaza, the practical reality eight months after the war was pronounced over is one of continued danger, displacement and loss, with the death toll still climbing and most of the enclave outside their control — a reminder of how wide the gap can run between a ceasefire signed and a war actually ended.