The population of Gaza has fallen 6 percent since the war with Israel began nearly 15 months ago as about 100,000 Palestinians left the enclave, while more than 55,000 are presumed dead, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), citing Hamas figures.

Around 45,500 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, have been killed since the war began and another 11,000 are missing, the bureau said, citing numbers from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

The Hamas figures cannot be verified and do not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November, 2024, and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.

According to the PCBS, the population of Gaza has declined by about 160,000 during the course of the war to 2.1 million, with more than a million or 47% of the total under the age of 18.

The PCBS said some 22% of Gaza’s population currently faces catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, according to the criteria of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global monitor.

Included in that 22% are some 3,500 children at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of food, the bureau said.

It added that Israel has “raged a brutal aggression against Gaza targeting all kinds of life there; humans, buildings and vital infrastructure… entire families were erased from the civil register. There are catastrophic human and material losses.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the PCBS data was “fabricated, inflated, and manipulated in order to vilify Israel.”

Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations of targeting civilians, saying it abides by international law and has a right to defend itself after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took over 250 hostages.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Some 83% of Gaza’s population are residing in the Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone,” according to IDF assessments in July.

The zone is located in the al-Mawasi area on the southern Strip’s coast, western neighborhoods of Khan Younis, and central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah. The size of the zone has changed multiple times, amid evolving IDF operations against the Hamas terror group.