More than 38,000 girls, women killed in Gaza conflict, UN agency says

GENEVA: Over 38,000 women and girls were killed in Gaza Strip by the end of last year, the UN estimated Friday, amounting to over half of the 71,000 deaths recorded by the territory’s health ministry since Oct 2023.

“Between Oct 2023 and Dec 2025, more than 38,000 women and girls were killed in Gaza — the result of Israeli air bombardment and land military operations,” the UN Women agency’s spokeswoman Sofia Calltorp told a press briefing in Geneva.

“This includes over 22,000 women and 16,000 girls, amounting to an average of at least 47 women and girls killed every day.”

The agency said the true figures were likely to be higher, with bodies still buried under rubble and reporting systems severely constrained. “Women and girls accounted for a proportion of deaths far higher than those observed in previous conflicts in Gaza,” Calltorp added.

A UN Women report found that women and girls made up 15 per cent of those killed in the 2008-2009 conflict and 22 per cent in the 2014 conflict. UN Women said those who had survived face daily threats to their lives, starvation, recurrent displacement, and deeply restricted access to essential services.

“On top of a staggering death toll, nearly 11,000 women and girls in Gaza have sustained injuries so devastating that they survive only with lifelong disabilities,” said Calltorp.

She said the conflict had reshaped Palestinian families, with tens of thousands of Gaza households now headed by women, who having lost their husbands, were now having to sustain their families “without income, without support, or access to essential services”.

Repeated displacement

Nearly a million women and girls have been repeatedly displaced during the conflict, while nearly 790,000 females having experienced crisis-level or catastrophic-level food insecurity.

Calltorp said the Middle East war, which erupted with the US-Israeli attack on Iran on Feb 28, had escalated the difficulties in Gaza, due to “border crossing closures and humanitarian access constraints”.

The fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas announced in October followed more than two years of devastation in Gaza.

So far 766 Palestinians have been killed since the truce came into effect, according to the Gaza health ministry. Despite the ceasefire, killings of women and girls have persisted in recent months, said UN Women.

Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2026

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