In a statement, the UN human rights chief says that Israel is not following the laws of war.
"Most of the dead are women and children. This unbearable situation is largely due to the Israeli army's repeated failure to adhere to the rules of war", says Volker Türk.
The UN has, according to the human rights chief, documented "serious violations" of international humanitarian law by both the Israeli military and Hamas and other Palestinian groups.
Once again, Volker Türk reiterated the UN's demand for an immediate ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, as well as all Palestinians subjected to arbitrary detention.
One of the bloodiest
The reports of over 40,000 dead come from the Gaza Strip's Hamas-affiliated health authority. Relatively speaking, Israel's warfare following Hamas' major terrorist attack last year is thus one of the bloodiest in recent decades.
I don't think the Gaza war is one of the 21st century's most violent conflicts in terms of the absolute number of dead, says researcher Michael Spagat at the University of London to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
However, as a proportion of the population, he estimates that the war is already among the five most brutal – and no one knows when and how it will end.
If we weigh in the time it took to kill one percent of this population, this could be unprecedented.
The figures, however, need to be viewed with several reservations. On the one hand, the number of dead listed by the Gaza authorities is not the entire conflict. Moreover, several thousand, both victims and perpetrators, are estimated to have been killed in Israel when militant Palestinians launched an attack and started the war on October 7. And since then, hundreds more have lost their lives in other areas than Gaza, including southern Lebanon, the West Bank, and within Israel.
Appears to work
On the other hand, Israel often claims that Palestinian officials regularly exaggerate their own side's casualties. Even US President Joe Biden questioned Palestinian statistics at the beginning of the war.
But several UN agencies and other international organizations working in the Gaza Strip consider Hamas authorities' figures to be credible. Even news agencies like AP and AFP have been able to follow the data collection at various stages. They have testified that, although it is difficult or impossible to obtain entirely accurate information in a war zone, the statistics appear to work in general.
