The death toll in Gaza due to the ongoing Israeli offensive has risen to 40,223, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reported on Wednesday. The ministry said that Israeli forces committed four massacres against civilians in the past 24 hours, resulting in 50 deaths and 124 injuries. The Ministry of Health's daily report indicated that since the beginning of the war on October 7, 92,981 people have been injured in addition to the 40,223 deaths. The ministry called on international and UN institutions to protect Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, its staff and patients, as Israeli operations approach the hospital. The government media office in Gaza said that the Israeli army is continuing to forcibly displace more than 1.7 million civilians in Gaza, confining them to a narrow area that does not exceed one-tenth of the Strip. On the ground, the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), announced targeting an Israeli "Merkava" tank with a "Yassin 105" shell east of Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. The Al-Qassam Brigades confirmed that they had detonated a previously booby-trapped tunnel shaft in an Israeli force west of Hamad City, north of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, killing and wounding the force. The Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, announced that it had shot down a drone belonging to the Israeli forces. "This happened while confronting the invading forces in the town of Aqaba in Tubas in the West Bank," the Al-Quds Brigades said in a statement.
