Deaths since October 7, 2023.
Israel’s yearlong genocidal slaughter in Gaza has now metastasized into a regional rampage of assassinations, indiscriminate bombing, mass murder, an invasion of Lebanon and now threats of the most devastating attack on Iran that Israel has ever launched. Israel’s frenzy of depraved mass murder and gangster-style threats, marking the anniversary of October 7, is coming so fast and furious it’s near impossible to keep up with the number of attacks and the rapidly growing death toll. (In the Face of Mounting U.S.-Israeli Aggression in the Middle East and the Heightening Danger of Imperialist Nuclear War…We Need Revolution, Nothing Less!)
Assassinations, Massive Air Strikes, Now a Land Invasion: Israel Murders 2,000 in Less Than a Week
On October 1, after two weeks of fierce bombings and assassinations directed at Hezbollah, an Islamic fundamentalist organization backed by Iran, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon.
Israel claimed it was launching a “limited, targeted incursion.” In fact, it is now carrying out a major invasion, with dozens of villages and towns in southern Lebanon being warned to evacuate or face death. All this while Israel unleashes massive bombing strikes across the country, including hitting some 2,000 targets in four days.
More than 1.2 million Lebanese, a quarter of the population, have been forced to leave their homes just in the last two weeks. Lebanon’s roads and streets are filled with exhausted and traumatized people searching for food and shelter, in baking heat and pouring rain, with many being forced to sleep outside. During this mass exodus, Israel bombed and destroyed a road leading into Syria, a road that tens of thousands of Lebanese were counting on as an escape route to safety.
Israeli strikes killed 28 health workers in a 24-hour period and made it impossible for the World Health Organization (WHO) to deliver medical supplies. Dozens of hospitals and clinics have been forced to close and those remaining are overwhelmed with casualties. Lebanon's Health Ministry reported more than 2,000 deaths, including 127 children and 261 women, and another 9,526 wounded in a year of hostilities with Israel, most of them in the last two weeks.
By September 25, some 50 people from three families had gathered in two buildings in the Shi’ite Muslim village of Maaysrah. They thought they would be safe there because the village is in a Christian region of Lebanon’s mountains which Israel had never attacked before. But that morning, Israel did strike the town, murdering two men and 14 women and children. More than 30 others were wounded, about half of them children.
Two Hezbollah fighters (one killed months earlier and another who had lost a leg) had apparently lived in the buildings before, but there were no active combatants present. "I got up and opened the door and there was nothing anymore, the walls were on the floor and there was fire and people and screaming," one teenager told Reuters.
"There were more than 12 kids, and we started to remove pieces, some other pieces, some were whole, some had parts missing. Some burned," he said. His grandmother and niece were killed, his parents and siblings wounded.1
Israel’s Non-Stop Genocide in Gaza—Doctors Estimate More Than 118,908 Killed—2,100 Are Babies and Toddlers
A child among the bodies at hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, October 2, 2024. Photo: AP
Meanwhile, Israel’s Gaza genocide continues unabated. The Israeli military is still bombing schools, shelters and orphanages, mass murdering men, women and children seeking food or refuge.
- On Wednesday, October 2, Palestinian health officials said Israeli attacks had killed 79 Palestinians and wounded more than 80 others over the past 24 hours.
- Thursday evening, they announced that in the last 24 hours, 99 were killed and 169 injured in Israeli air attacks.
- On Sunday, October 6, Israel bombed a mosque and a school being used as a shelter, repeating, without a shred of evidence, that the targets were Hamas “command and control centers.” At least 26 Palestinians were killed and dozens more were wounded.
- Israel has now launched a major raid into northern Gaza and designated most of the area an evacuation zone, threatening and trying to force people to leave their homes and move south once again.
Since October 7, 2023, the toll in Gaza from Israeli attacks stands at more than 42,612 killed, including some 16,765 children, and more than 97,166 injured, according to Gaza’s health ministry. A team of 99 doctors from the U.S. who volunteered in Gaza estimate that 118,908 Palestinians have been killed—one of every 20 Palestinians—in the past year alone.
Israel’s Escalating Reign of Terror, Death and Dispossession Across the Palestinian West Bank
The Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 did not originate in or involve the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank. Yet that hasn’t stopped Israel from launching a reign of terror against Palestinians there, demonstrating once again the genocidal nature of the Israeli state when it comes to the Palestinian people. Settler attacks and forced dispossession of Palestinian villagers have skyrocketed. Military raids have flattened homes, ripped up roads, and left trails of destruction. At least 742 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s military, police, or settlers since October 7, 2023, including more than 163 children, and at least 6,250 more have been injured.
In yet another bloodthirsty escalation, on October 3, Israeli jets attacked a crowded cafe in the Tulkarm refugee camp, killing 18 Palestinians and leaving a trail of wreckage and destruction. It was Israel’s deadliest air strike in the West Bank in decades. The brother of the cafe owner who was killed in the attack said, “The missiles targeted a civilian building. A family was wiped from the civil registry. What was their fault? The family was asleep in their house. There’s no safe place for the Palestinian people.”
U.S. and Israel Bomb Civilian Infrastructure in Yemen—Threatening Aid for 17 Million
On September 29, Israeli jets carried out 20 air strikes on critical infrastructure in the port city of Hodeidah. At least six people were killed and 57 injured, overwhelmingly civilians. Then on October 4, U.S. warplanes struck 15 targets across Yemen, including in Hodeidah and the capital city of Sanaa. (Casualty figures were not available as of this writing.)2
Yemen is one of the most impoverished countries on earth, and has already suffered some 400,000 deaths, with another 4.5 million driven from their homes due in large measure to Saudi Arabia’s U.S.-enabled war of aggression (2015-present).]3
Now, bombing Hodeidah could have a devastating impact on millions of Yemenis: “Over half of Yemen’s population is dependent on humanitarian aid” which flows through this port city, according to Human Rights Watch. Stop and think: half the population is dependent on aid that flows through a city now under Israeli attack.
Mwatana, a Yemeni human rights group, reports that Israel’s attacks caused the near-total destruction of Hodeidah’s power stations and immediately impacted hundreds of thousands, who were left without power in extreme heat. Hospitals and health care facilities were also impacted. Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure is a war crime.
"I couldn’t sleep all night because of the heat after the power went out,” one resident told the human rights group, “but what broke my heart was seeing my five-month-old daughter’s body covered in heat rash. Her cries from the pain were unbearable."4