The United Nations announced Friday that dozens of strikes carried out by the Israeli military in Gaza in recent weeks only killed women and children as it issued a stark warning about Israel's blockade of essential aid.
"Between 18 March and 9 April 2025, there were some 224 incidents of Israeli strikes on residential buildings and tents for internally displaced people," said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, according to press briefing notes.
"In some 36 strikes about which the U.N. Human Rights Office corroborated information, the fatalities recorded so far were only women and children," she said.
In response to reports of the strikes that exclusively killed women and children, the Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a Friday statement that "the intentional mass slaughter of women and children further exposes the genocidal intent of the far-right Israeli government."
"The international community—and our own government—must end its silence and inaction as the Palestinian people face mass destruction, torture, forced starvation, slaughter, and ethnic cleansing," according to the group.
According to Shamdasani, Israel's increasing issuance of evacuation orders, which she called tantamount to displacement orders, have forced Palestinians in Gaza into "ever shrinking spaces where they have little or no access to lifesaving services, including water, food, and shelter, and where they continue to be subject to attacks."
Israel shattered a shaky, two-month long cease-fire deal when it resumed strikes on Gaza on March 18. Not long after strikes resumed, local health officials in Gaza announced that the death toll of Israel's deadly campaign on the enclave had surpassed 50,000 people.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Friday that the death toll since March 18 has reached over 1,540 people.
Israel also has imposed a blockade of humanitarian aid into Gaza, leading a top official with the U.N. Children's Fund to warn in mid-March that children in Gaza are "living without the very basics they need to survive—yet again."
Shamdasani said Friday that Israel's closure of crossings into Gaza, which has prevented food, medicine, and other essentials from entering the enclave, is now in its sixth week.
"Israeli officials have made statements suggesting that the entry of humanitarian aid is directly linked to the release of hostages, raising serious concerns about collective punishment and the use of starvation of the civilian population as a method of war, both of which constitute crimes under international law," she said.
What's more, she said, "in light of the cumulative impact of Israeli forces' conduct in Gaza, the office is seriously concerned that Israel appears to be inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence as a group in Gaza."
