A war monitor has identified over 3,000 Palestinians murdered in Gaza in nearly 350 individual events over the first 17 days of the war on Gaza, marking the first step in an effort to identify every civilian killed during "Israel's" onslaught on the Strip.

Though the total casualties exceed 39,000 Palestinians, Airwars, the organization involved, claims the work demonstrates that it is feasible to identify people murdered while a war is underway.

Emily Tripp, director of Airwars, stated that militaries often claim it is "impossible to know who has been killed and how-but one of our key messages is to show that it is possible."

Airwars was able to identify 65 victims murdered in an Israeli airstrike in Jabalia refugee camp on October 9, the most lethal single occurrence recorded in the first period of two weeks in the war.

Investigators relied on a variety of reports, most notably Facebook posts from families and friends, to identify those slain in the incident.

Each fatality documented is associated with one of 346 particular occurrences investigated thus far. "We know how and when each person was killed," Tripp stated. The goal of Airwars is to create a dossier on each episode that can be used as the foundation for future efforts to pursue accountability.

Tripp continued that it was “our job is to act as a bridge between chaos and justice, to serve civilian victims of military action around the world. We see what we are doing as essential initial work before further investigations can be done."

Children made up Airwar's biggest single category of persons killed, accounting for 1,129 (37.7%), followed by men (28.4%) and women (23.5%). The ages of the remaining individuals were unknown, thus they could not be categorized with certainty.

The organization was also able to confirm approximately 75% of the victims' names (2,236 men, women, and children) by cross-referencing them with a list of 7,000 names supplied by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza in late October.

Related News

Famine, massacres, and relentless strikes turning Gaza to 'wasteland'

Tech staff challenge Israeli ties at Amazon, Microsoft, and Google

At the time, the Health Ministry was attempting to refute US and Israeli claims that its numbers were erroneous or too vast to trust. Airwars says its work is yet another example that "it is possible to believe the MoH figures, and you don't have to wait many years to be sure," as Tripp stated.

"Israel" maintains that it does not target civilians and accuses Hamas of using hospitals and other civilian facilities for military purposes. 

According to the conflict monitor, the intensity of the war on Gaza exceeds any conflict it has tracked in the last 10 years.

Airwars has recorded almost 4,450 incidents of civilian injury since the beginning of the war and analyzed 550 of them, including 346 from the first 17 days. Another 200 are being reviewed by a team of 10 to 15 investigators who mostly work in Arabic and monitor media and social media reports.

Each onslaught has resulted in a huge number of casualties, which has been a hallmark of the battle. Though outside the 17-day time frame, Airwars has reported more than 100 deaths from a few additional events, including three at the end of October: an airstrike at al-Taj, strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp, and the bombing of a tower east of the Nuseirat camp.

“Prior to this conflict, it was very rare to find cases where there were more than 10 civilians killed,” Tripp said. “But here, suddenly, we found that in a third of our cases, there were reports of 10 civilians killed.”

39,000 Gaza high school students miss exams, 450 killed amid genocide

This comes as the Palestinian Ministry of Education announced on Monday the results of the first round of the General Secondary Education Exams for the academic year 2023-2024.

In a press conference, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education stated that 39,000 secondary school students from the Gaza Strip did not take the exam this year due to the ongoing Israeli genocide, with at least 450 of them having been martyred.

Additionally, there is no overall pass rate, as the number of students is incomplete. Approximately 50,000 students from the occupied West Bank and those in some other countries (Turkey, Qatar, Romania, Bulgaria, and Russia) participated in the exams across 506 examination centers.

On the day when exam results are announced in Palestine, a heartbroken student breaks in tears for being denied the chance to graduate high school due to the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/Z1kY6NJfzX

— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) July 29, 2024

The ongoing Israeli genocide, now on its 297th day, has deprived around 39,000 students in Gaza of the opportunity to take the General Secondary Education Exams for 2024. Furthermore, 55 other Palestinian students were prevented from sitting for the exams due to being held in Israeli prisons, according to the Ministry of Education.