28,985 Palestinians killed in Gaza since Oct 7: Health Ministry

Gaza Health Ministry on Sunday said that at least 28,985 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory during Israeli bombardment in Gaza, media reports said. “A total of 127 people died in the last 24 hours, and 68,883 people have been injured since war erupted on October 7,” the Ministry said. On October 7 last year, Hamas attacked Israel in a surprise attack killing nearly 1400 people while more 200 were taken hostage. Since then Israel has been relentlessly bombing the Palestinian territories while the international community has called for the ceasefire between the two varying factions. Meanwhile, Israeli strikes across Gaza killed at least 18 people overnight and into Sunday, according to medics and witnesses, as the United States said it would veto another draft UN cease-fire resolution. The US, Israel’s top ally, instead hopes to broker a cease-fire agreement and hostage release between Israel and Hamas, and envisions a wider resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed back, calling Hamas’ demands “delusional” and rejecting U.S. and international calls for a pathway to Palestinian statehood. His Cabinet adopted a declaration Sunday saying Israel “categorically rejects international edicts on a permanent arrangement with the Palestinians” and opposes any unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, which it said would “grant a major prize to terror” after the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war. Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive until “total victory” over Hamas and to expand it to Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah, where more than half the enclave’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. The head of the World Health Organization, meanwhile, said Nasser Hospital, the main medical center serving southern Gaza, “is not functional anymore” after Israeli forces raided the facility in the southern city of Kh