--- title: "Three Years of War in Gaza, Written in the Ledger of the Dead and the Broken" description: "One Gazan in 30 is dead, 42 of 666 health facilities still work, and a year-old ceasefire has not stopped the killing" author: "Jan Sokol" published: 2026-10-07T05:02:04Z modified: 2026-10-07T08:40:17Z url: https://rews.cc/a/three-years-of-war-in-gaza-written-in-the-ledger-of-the-dead-be8253 language: en tags: ["gaza", "israel", "war", "health", "infrastructure", "mideast"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Three Years of War in Gaza, Written in the Ledger of the Dead and the Broken *One Gazan in 30 is dead, 42 of 666 health facilities still work, and a year-old ceasefire has not stopped the killing* By Jan Sokol · October 7, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/three-years-of-war-in-gaza-written-in-the-ledger-of-the-dead-be8253 ## In brief - At least 74,000 Palestinians, including 21,000 children, killed in three years, about one in 30 of Gaza’s pre-war population - Health Ministry says at least 1,460 killed and 5,116 injured since the 10 October 2025 ceasefire - OCHA says 94% of health facilities are out of service; 42 of 666 still function - Nearly half of Gazans live on under six litres of water a day; 1.98 million people, 90% of the population, are displaced - Nearly 300 journalists and media workers killed, including 12 from Al Jazeera, per the Shireen Abu Akleh Observatory Some histories can only be written in arithmetic. Adjectives give out early in them, and the clerks of catastrophe are left with columns, ratios and percentages, as though a people could be described by subtraction alone. The war began on 7 October 2023, when Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, and other Palestinian groups attacked southern Israel, killing 1,139 people and taking about 240 captive. Israel answered with bombardment, and it tightened the 16-year blockade of the Gaza Strip into a total closure. Three years later, [Marium Ali of AJLabs, writing for Al Jazeera](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/7/three-years-of-israels-genocide-in-gaza-in-numbers), has set out where things stand in numbers, in a war the network calls a genocide. Some of those numbers have [already been weighed as fractions of what was lost](https://rews.cc/a/three-years-on-gaza-measures-its-life-in-percentages-of-what-57b407). Here they are once more, set out like the pages of an account book that nobody will ever close. ## One in thirty At least 74,000 Palestinians have been killed, at least 21,000 of them children. That is about one person in every 30, or 3 percent of the population Gaza had before the war. The Palestinian Ministry of Health counts only deaths recorded at hospitals or officially registered. The thousands still under rubble or missing are not in its count, so the real toll is likely much higher. On 4 October the ministry [put the total at 74,237](https://english.palinfo.com/news/2026/10/04/371373/). The ministry is part of the Hamas-led government, but UN agencies and international organisations regard its detailed records as generally reliable, [the Associated Press noted](https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/world/2026-09-27-gaza-ministry-says-1145-palestinians-killed-since-the-ceasefire/). More than 175,000 people have been wounded, about one Gazan in 13. A conservative World Health Organization estimate suggests that roughly 24 percent of them have life-changing injuries requiring long-term rehabilitation. A quarter of those are children. ## A ceasefire that keeps a death register The ceasefire took effect at noon on 10 October 2025. According to the latest Health Ministry figures, Israel has killed at least 1,460 Palestinians and injured 5,116 since then. The count [passed 1,000 in June](https://www.npr.org/2026/06/18/g-s1-128734/over-1-000-people-killed-during-gaza-ceasefire-palestinian-authorities-say), NPR reported at the time, and it has kept rising. An Al Jazeera analysis found Israeli attacks on Gaza on 325 of the past 361 days. On only 36 days were no attacks, deaths or injuries reported. Washington insists the ceasefire is holding. Israel says it is targeting Hamas and other militants who pose a threat and is responding to violations of the truce. The AP reported that seven Israeli soldiers have been killed in the same period. The rest of the US-brokered arrangement has stalled: Israeli forces control more than half of the territory, Hamas has not disarmed, and reconstruction has not begun. A reflection, not a finding: power has always been able to keep a word alive long after the thing it named has died. A truce can exist in communiqués while its casualties are counted daily in hospital admissions. ## Forty-two doors still open According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 94 percent of Gaza’s hospitals and clinics are fully or partially out of service. Of 666 health facilities, 42 still function, and they are overwhelmed and running down their supplies. The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids attacks on hospitals and gives medical units and personnel special protection. Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, intentionally attacking a hospital is a war crime. Those are the rules. The figure of 42 shows how far they have held. ## Six litres Wells, pipelines, desalination plants and sewage systems have been struck since October 2023. UN experts say most of the water and sanitation network has been damaged or destroyed. Local authorities describe shattered pipes, and wells that are either contaminated by sewage or cut off by fighting and displacement. Ninety-one percent of households face water insecurity. Nearly half the population lives on less than six litres a day for drinking and cooking, while the emergency minimum for short-term survival is 20 litres. Six litres. A family’s day, measured in a few bottles. ## Houses, schools Eighty-two percent of all structures in the Strip have been destroyed, and whole neighbourhoods have been [erased from the map](https://rews.cc/a/gaza-from-above-a-landscape-erased-counted-building-by-build-e543ea). OCHA counts 1.98 million people displaced, 90 percent of the population. Even what still stands can kill. On 16 September a war-damaged residential building collapsed in Gaza City, and 21 people, 12 of them children, were reportedly killed, [according to OCHA](https://www.unocha.org/occupied-palestinian-territory). Some 93 percent of schools need complete reconstruction, OCHA says, leaving more than 700,000 students without formal education. At least 63 university buildings have been destroyed. Those still standing now serve as shelters for the displaced, so the halls built to prepare a future are being used to get people through the present. ## Those who were meant to tell it According to the Shireen Abu Akleh Observatory, nearly 300 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023, which makes it the deadliest place in the world to be a reporter. Israel’s military has said that 170 of the press workers it killed were militants, a claim that [its own files contradict](https://rews.cc/a/the-idf-says-it-killed-170-terrorists-with-press-passes-its--68bf38). Twelve of the dead worked for Al Jazeera: Samer Abudaqa, Hamza Dahdouh, Ismail al-Ghoul, Ahmed al-Louh, Hossam Shabat, Ibrahim Thaher, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Mohammed Nofal, Anas al-Sharif, Mohammed Salama, Mohammed Wishah and Ahmed Wishah. Israel still bars foreign media from Gaza. The only exceptions are a few reporters embedded with its soldiers under strict military censorship.