Gaza's humanitarian crisis in numbers

Palestinians carry their belongings as they flee their homes following Israeli airstrikes in northern Gaza on May 16, 2025. (Photo: REUTERS)

By DW News
Friday, July 25, 2025

The situation in the Gaza Strip is catastrophic: scant aid supplies are trickling in while international organizations warn of a famine. Here are the key numbers at a glance.

Most of the buildings have been destroyed, hospitals have had to close, and food is scarce. The reality in the Gaza Strip is catastrophic.

Around 90 per cent of the more than 2 million inhabitants have now fled within the territory, and some have already been forced to move several times.

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With the latest evacuation order for the city of Deir al-Balah, 87.8 per cent of the Gaza Strip is now under evacuation orders or within the Israeli military's restricted military zones, according to the UN emergency aid office OCHA. The population is now crammed into 12 per cent of the Gaza Strip, it said on Tuesday.

International pressure on Israel is growing, with 28 states, including France, the UK and many other Western nations, calling for an end to the war.

How many deaths have there been since October 7, 2023?

According to OCHA, 58,380 Palestinians (as of July 15, 2025) have died since the war started in the Gaza Strip in October 2023, including many women and children. OCHA, which is responsible for coordinating humanitarian affairs, cites data from the Health Ministry in Gaza.

The United Nations and Israeli intelligence officials deem the numbers reported by Gaza's health ministry as reliable. Given Israel's ongoing military operation in the small enclave, numbers cannot be independently verified.

Several third-party studies have indicated the true death toll could be nearly twice as high. According to a study by an international research team, more than 80,000 Palestinians are said to have been killed by January of this year. The scientific journal Nature reported on the study, which was conducted under the direction of Michael Spagat from Royal Holloway College, University of London, in late June 2025.

The scientists worked closely with the research organisation, The Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), which is funded by the European Union, among others. PCPSR staff surveyed 2,000 families about deaths within their household and then extrapolated the figures.

A study published in The Lancet in January of this year also found that deaths in Gaza were being underreported. For this study, obituaries on social networks were compared with the Health Ministry's lists.

How many people are starving in the Gaza Strip?

After almost two years of war, the lack of basic goods entering the Gaza Strip has had dramatic consequences. Many Palestinians are suffering from hunger, often lacking the most basic necessities.

According to Welthungerhilfe, a German non-profit humanitarian assistance organisation, the 25 remaining bakeries had to close at the beginning of April. Most of the 177 community kitchens have also run out of supplies, Welthungerhilfe told DW.

Almost one in three people eat nothing for days on end, the UN World Food Program (WFP) told DW. For most of them, food aid is the only way to get any food at all.

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According to the latest IPC report from May 2025, which many aid organisations also refer to, according to DW research, the entire population of the Gaza Strip is now affected by acute food insecurity (IPC level 3). According to the definition, this means that the choice of food is limited, and people have to work extremely hard to get the calories they need.

According to the IPC, 470,000 people in the Gaza Strip are at risk of catastrophic hunger (IPC level 5). This corresponds to acute danger to life due to hunger; there is an extreme lack of calories per person per day.

The IPC system (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) is an internationally recognised instrument for measuring and classifying hunger and food security. Five levels are defined, ranging from phase one, "minimal," to "stressed," "crisis," "emergency," and phase five, "Famine."

It is also forecast that more than 71,000 children and an estimated 17,000 mothers will require urgent treatment for acute malnutrition in the coming months. According to UNICEF, the UN's children's humanitarian agency, children are considered to be acutely malnourished if their weight is less than 80% of the appropriate weight for their age.

Teams from the aid organisation, Doctors Without Borders, also noted a sharp rise in cases of "acute malnutrition" in mid-July. According to the nongovernmental organisation, hundreds of women and children with severe and moderate malnutrition are currently being treated in health centres, and the numbers are clearly on the rise.

According to Gaza's Health Ministry, people are dying of hunger every day, most of them children. On Tuesday, for example, 15 people died of starvation. This cannot be verified independently.