❈ ❈ ❈
Gaza Post-Ceasefire Death Toll Surpasses 1,000 Amid Ongoing Israeli Attacks: What We Know
18/06/2026: At least 1,005 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip since the so-called US-backed ceasefire came into effect on October 10, as Israel continues to violate the agreement through daily attacks and killings.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health on Wednesday, 1,005 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire began. This means an average of four Palestinians per day.
In all cases, the Israeli military claimed its forces were firing at legitimate targets for one of two reasons. They were either targeting Hamas members or suspects who approached the so-called “Yellow Line” and were thereby endangering soldiers. But the military has not provided detailed explanations for each attack or evidence.
“We mourn as Gaza reaches yet another tragic milestone … Thousands more people who were told the worst was over are still burying their loved ones,” said Fikr Shalltoot, Gaza director at Medical Aid for Palestinians.
What Are the Terms of the Ceasefire?
On September 29, the US unveiled a 20-point proposal to end Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, release the remaining captives held in the enclave, allow the full entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged territory and outline a three-phase withdrawal of Israeli forces.
Some of the main conditions of the first phase, include:
- An end to the attack in Gaza
- Lifting the blockade of all aid into Gaza by Israel and stopping its interference in aid distribution
- Release of all captives held in Gaza – alive or dead – by Hamas
- Release of some 2,000 Palestinian hostages and disappeared people from Israeli jails
- Withdrawal of Israeli forces to the “yellow line”
- Open the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt
On October 10, 2025, Trump’s ceasefire took effect in the Gaza Strip.
Attacks and Killings Did Not Stop
According to a UN report released on Friday, 32 percent of the first 574 verified Palestinians were children.
The UN said 48 of those 183 verified Palestinians were killed in incidents where children were the sole victims, “raising concerns about Israeli forces directly targeting Palestinian children,” the report states. A UN official told Haaretz that 15 of 121 women killed during the ceasefire died in incidents where all the victims were women and children.
According to data from the Palestinian Health Ministry, 61 percent of those killed (614) are men aged 18-60, and 11 percent (109) are women aged 18-60. 25 percent (253) are children under 18. 3 percent are adults (15 men and 12 women) aged 60 and over.
The most dangerous area since the ceasefire has been Gaza City, totaling 353 Palestinians killed, many in its eastern parts. Israel has reportedly killed 230 people and 200 people in the Khan Yunis district.
The Palestinian Health Ministry data also shows that most of the Palestinians (69 percent) were killed by remote-controlled missile strikes, 15 percent by small arms fire, and the rest by artillery and other munitions.
The deadliest month was October, immediately after the ceasefire was declared, when 251 people were killed. The least deadly month was December, with 61 recorded killed.
Earlier this week, the Ministry said the overall death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza has also surpassed 73,000.
There has been a spike in Israeli attacks in the war-torn Strip despite the ceasefire over the past two months.
At least 119 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across the war-torn Gaza Strip in May alone, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, marking the highest monthly death toll recorded since the start of 2026. According to the Ministry, women, children, and elderly people accounted for 30% of those killed, including 19 children (16%) and 10 women (8.5%).
Israel has violated the ceasefire more than 3,200 times, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.
Apartment buildings, markets, vehicles, and cafés have continued to come under attack. In some cases, families received displacement orders only minutes before their homes were bombed, while many others received no warning at all.
United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk condemned Israel’s recent attacks in the Gaza Strip, saying that “the unrelenting pattern of killings” reflects Israel’s “sweeping impunity”.
“Palestinians are still being killed and injured in what is left of their homes, shelters and tents of displaced families, on the streets, in vehicles, at a medical facility and a classroom,” Turk said.
The So-Called “Yellow Line”
The attacks come as ICC-wanted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said two weeks ago that he had directed the Israeli military to take control of 70 percent of the Gaza Strip as a “start,” forcing approximately 2 million Palestinians into a shrinking fraction of the coastal enclave’s shattered territory.
According to United Nations data, over 193 Gazans were killed near the “Yellow Line” during the ceasefire.
In late April, the Israeli military issued maps to international aid groups that showed the forces already controlling approximately 64% of Gaza by expanding the so-called “yellow line” westward across Gaza in the seven months since the ceasefire, rather than the 53 percent stipulated in the October agreement.
Hamas said Israel’s moving of the line “constitutes an explicit and ongoing undermining of the ceasefire agreement, a serious violation of its provisions, and an exposed attempt to impose new facts on the ground by force, with the aim of entrenching military control over the Strip and undermining any real chance of stabilizing the situation or making de-escalation efforts succeed.”
Nickolay Mladenov, a Bulgarian diplomat who serves as the official in charge of implementing the agreement, said earlier this month that the “yellow line” could turn “into a fence or wall, a permanent separation of Gaza.”
The yellow line is a non-physical demarcation line separating the Israeli occupation forces deployment from certain areas of Gaza, while occupying more than half of the Strip. The line divides Gaza into two zones: an eastern area under Israeli military control and a western area where Palestinians live, were forcibly displaced to, and are under constant Israeli threat of attacks.
During a visit to the Gaza Strip in December, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, said unequivocally that the “Yellow Line” is “a new border line”.
Haaretz previously reported that the Israeli military is turning the “yellow line” into a physical border, despite it being initially intended as a temporary demarcation. The report added that there is currently no detailed mechanism regulating a withdrawal from it.
Israeli forces have systematically destroyed the remaining buildings in their zone, so its expansion to 70% of Gaza would mean that the 2.2 million Palestinians who have survived the war would be crammed into less than a third of their original territory, which was already overcrowded.
Last Friday, dozens of families in eastern Gaza City were forced to flee after Israeli forces placed yellow cement blocks signalling a further expansion of the so-called “Yellow Line” to the west, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Ongoing Genocide and War Crimes
Also, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said earlier that Israel’s ultimate aim was to expel large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza in what he claimed to be “voluntary migration” but human rights activists describe as a long-term plan for ethnic cleansing by making living conditions inside Gaza intolerable.
Ajith Sunghay, head of UN’s human rights office in the occupied Palestinian Territories, said that “its concern over the commission of war crimes in Gaza has not stopped.”
“It is difficult enough to navigate life in chronic displacement in the ruins of Gaza, under blockade, and after Israeli attacks virtually destroyed every essential system: healthcare, education, food production, law enforcement and civil order,” he said.
“Continuing military attacks on a population living under these conditions is unthinkable.”
The Israeli military is also preparing for the possibility of a large-scale assault on Gaza. Military Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has, in recent weeks, approved several operational plans presented by the Southern Command as part of discussions on renewing ground attacks in the Gaza Strip, according to Haaretz.
Senior Israeli military officers have been pushing internally to advance the approved plans.
Haaretz said the military believes that if such a decision is made, forces will have to enter areas it has not entered until now, including parts of central Gaza’s refugee camps, the Muwasi area in southern Gaza, where many displaced Palestinians have been concentrated, and large sections of Gaza City.
Muhammad Shehada, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said: “Netanyahu is now declaring the whole Trump deal, the framework for Gaza, to be null and void. That’s what it means in a nutshell. There’s no other way to spell it out.”
“The conditions there are already appalling. It is the single most overcrowded place on the face of the planet,” Shehada said.
“Every square metre has another displaced family, another makeshift tent, or some sort of improvised shelter on it. So it would be a death sentence for a lot of people who physically have no place to go.”
[Courtesy: Quds News Network. Founded in 2011, it is the largest independent Palestinian youth news network, advocating for freedom, dignity, and Palestinian self-determination.]
❈ ❈ ❈
Israel Killed More Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank During the Gaza Genocide Than in the Previous 17 Years: Oxfam
A new Oxfam report has found that more Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank during Israel’s genocide in Gaza than in any year over the previous 17 years. It added that children accounted for more than one in five Palestinians killed in the West Bank over the past two decades.
The charity published a report on Wednesday analysing UN data from the occupied Palestinian territory. It found that 1,036 Palestinians, including 225 children, were killed by Israeli troops or settlers between 2006 and 2022.
By comparison, 1,244 Palestinians, including 268 children, were killed between 2023 and 2025.
The figures show that more than one in five of those killed over the past two decades were children.
Israeli settler and military violence in the West Bank has surged since the start of the genocide in Gaza in October 7, 2023.
Meanwhile in the West Bank, Israel has carried out deadly raids, systematically destroyed refugee camps, forcibly displaced tens of thousands of Palestinian families, armed and emboldened settlers and imposed unprecedented restrictions on Palestinian movement.
“The mounting killing of civilians in the West Bank is tragic and horrifying,” said Bushra Khalidi, an Oxfam humanitarian policy specialist. “While the eyes of the world have been on Gaza, attacks in the West Bank have been accelerating.”
Almost 46,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced in the West Bank over the last three years – compared to more than 13,000 during the previous 14 years – due to Israeli raids, settler violence, demolitions and access restrictions, according to the Oxfam report.
Bedouin and herding communities have also been affected. At least 5,900 Palestinians from those groups have been forcibly displaced, according to UN data.
People in the West Bank have also experienced repeated demolitions and destruction, not just of their homes but also of vital infrastructure, including water pipelines, Oxfam found.
It added that there are now a record 925 obstacles that permanently or intermittently restrict the movement of three million Palestinians across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This is 43 per cent more than the annual average of 647 movement obstacles in the preceding 20 years, Oxfam said.
Despite the “ongoing process of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank”, Oxfam said it continues to support vulnerable communities across the West Bank with humanitarian assistance.
The charity called for “an end to Israel’s unlawful occupation and further annexation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem”.
The Israeli occupation government is directly involved in settler attacks that have killed, injured and displaced Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, while Israeli forces protect settlers, a UN inquiry said.
Released on Tuesday by the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the report found that Israeli occupation authorities had enabled settler attacks through financial and military support, in a climate of impunity fostered by judicial and law-enforcement bodies.
The report said Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian villages and agricultural land had surged since 2023, rising by 130 percent, including incidents involving groups of masked assailants. Israeli forces routinely accompanied settlers and acted as a shield for the violence, it said.
Israel says such attacks violate military protocol and are investigated. Israeli and Palestinian rights groups, however, say such investigations rarely lead to punishment.
Hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers live on Palestinian lands captured by Israel in the 1967 war.
Most countries consider such settlements a violation of international law, a position upheld in a 2024 ruling by the UN’s top court.
“The increasing participation of Israeli security forces in settler attacks amounts to a de facto collapse of the distinction between settlers and soldiers,” the report found.
It said such violence has been used to advance state policy, including the unlawful occupation, displacement of Palestinians and the annexation of Palestinian territory.
The commission documented cases of assaults, abductions and abuse of Palestinian children by settlers. In one incident on April 19, 2025, a 12-year-old girl and her 3-year-old brother were abducted at knifepoint, dragged to an olive grove and tied to a tree with plastic restraints until their family intervened.
The Commission also said settlers committed or threatened sexual violence to instil fear and harassed Palestinian women.
“The relentless, daily assaults by Israeli settlers against Palestinians are intolerable – and must end,” said the commission’s head, S. Muralidhar, an Indian former senior judge. He urged the international community to press Israel to dismantle settlements and outposts and curb the violence.
Despite periodic condemnations and the dismantling of some unauthorized outposts, Israel has not taken sustained measures to stop the attacks, the report said.
A previous report by the Commission found that Israel had committed genocide during its war in Gaza, and that senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had incited these acts.
Israeli settlers and forces have carried out intensified and increasingly violent attacks in the occupied West Bank with the purpose of forcing Palestinians out of their homes and lands.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, over 1,152 Palestinians, including 239 children, have been killed and more than 11,885 injured in the West Bank since October 7, 2023.
According to OCHA, between 7 October 2023 and 22 April 2026, 1,081 Palestinians – at least 235 of them children – were killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Over 35 have been killed since the beginning of 2026.
For years, Israel has sought to annex the occupied West Bank, with officials and ministers publicly expressing support for such a move.
Under the current government, which took office in early 2023, settlement expansion has reached its highest level since the UN began tracking such data in 2017.
In 2025 alone, nearly 47,390 housing units were advanced, approved, or tendered, up from around 26,170 in 2024.
Recently, the Israeli cabinet announced a series of sweeping measures aimed at accelerating settlement expansion across the occupied West Bank and deepening Israel’s de facto annexation of Palestinian land.
The rules will make it easier for Israeli settlers to buy land in the occupied West Bank and give Israeli officials stronger powers to enforce laws on Palestinians in the area, Israeli media reported.
“To force Palestinians out, settlers resort to harassment, intimidation and violence, “with the backing of the Israeli government and military”, Peace Now said.
“No one is putting the pressure on Israel or on the Israeli authorities to stop this and so the settlers feel it, they feel the complete impunity that they’re just free to continue to do this,” said Allegra Pacheco, director of the West Bank Protection Consortium, a group of NGOs working to support Palestinian communities against displacement.
Recently, the UN Human Rights Council warned in a new report that Israeli policies in the West Bank – including “the systematic unlawful use of force by Israeli security forces” and unlawful demolitions of Palestinian homes – aim to uproot Palestinians.
“These violations, together with pervasive and growing settler violence committed with impunity, are fundamental to the coercive environment that induces forced displacement and forcible transfer, which is a war crime,” the report said.
It added that these policies are aimed at “altering the character, status and demographic composition of the occupied West Bank, raising serious concerns of ethnic cleansing”.
Human rights groups say the Israeli occupation has allowed the settlers to operate with total impunity in their attacks against Palestinians.
Israeli organisation B’Tselem has accused Israel of actively aiding the settlers’ violence “as part of a strategy to cement the takeover of Palestinian land”.
The UN also warned last year that settler attacks were being carried out “with the acquiescence, support, and in some cases participation, of Israeli security forces”.
Britain, Canada, France, Norway, New Zealand and Australia announced new sanctions on Tuesday targeting Israeli settler networks enabling and financing settler violence. The measures also include a non-binding recommendation to restrict trade with Israeli settlements.
According to global rights group Amnesty International, the displacement of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank forms part of a deliberate Israeli government strategy of ethnic cleansing rather than the actions of a few “rogue” settlers or far-right government ministers.
The release of Amnesty’s new report comes on Wednesday as the Israeli government has approved record levels of illegal settlement expansion and annexation of large parts of the West Bank in recent months.
“The [displacement] campaign is not the product of ‘rogue’ settlers, settlers’ organizations or ‘extremist’ government ministers … settler violence is not an aberration but an integral part of an organized state policy,” read the report.
“The ethnic cleansing campaign in Area C is state-sanctioned, state-driven and state-implemented; it seeks to accelerate the Israeli government’s annexation agenda and settlement expansion through war crimes and crimes against humanity,” it added.
In it, the rights group called on the international community to “prevent the destruction of Palestinian communities and the annexation of the West Bank”.
[Courtesy: Quds News Network. Founded in 2011, it is the largest independent Palestinian youth news network, advocating for freedom, dignity, and Palestinian self-determination.]


