Palestine reported a 6% reduction in Gaza's population from October 2023

The population of the Gaza Strip has decreased by 6% since October 2023. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reported on January 2 on its website.

"More than 45,000 have died in Palestine since October 7, 2023, 98% of them in the Gaza Strip. <...> The population of the Gaza Strip has decreased by 6% by the end of 2024," the material said.

The statistics bureau also said that, according to the country's health ministry, of the 45,484 Palestinians killed in Gaza, some 17,581 were children and 12,048 were women. It is noted that about 11,000 more are considered missing.

About 100,000 Palestinians have fled the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the Israeli aggression, and about 106,962 others have been wounded by the end of December 2024.

Based on the above data, the estimated Palestinian population at the end of 2024 is 5.5 million Palestinians," the bureau added.

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Earlier in the day, it was reported that at least seven infants in the Gaza Strip died of hypothermia in refugee camps. It is specified that the deaths occurred against the background of Israel's restriction of humanitarian aid supplies to the enclave.

Before that, on December 16, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) told "Izvestia" that about 8 thousand pregnant women in the Gaza Strip are in conditions of hunger. The fund added that at least 345,000 people, including 38,000 teenage girls, live in conditions of hunger in the Gaza Strip.

In November, the Commissioner General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Philip Lazzarini said that the number of dead as well as those buried under rubble in the Gaza Strip may exceed 43,000, and the number of injured may exceed 103,000.

The situation in the Middle East escalated on the morning of October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian radical movement Hamas subjected the territory of Israel to massive rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. On the same day, Israel began retaliatory strikes.