Israel's war could kill nearly 86,000 more Palestinians in Gaza — study

Nearly 86,000 more Palestinians could die if Israel's ongoing war against besieged Gaza further escalates, a joint US-UK study indicates, as Israel vows to push its occupational troops into the southernmost town of Rafah on the Egyptian border, where over half of Gaza's 2.3 million people have sought refuge from Israeli invasion.

The Crisis in Gaza: Scenario-Based Health Impact Projections is a joint project from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Johns Hopkins University's Center for Humanitarian Health.

The study, released on Monday, tracked three scenarios, including a worst-case possibility in which hostilities escalate in Gaza, resulting in the killings of 85,750 Palestinians from physical trauma and disease in the next six months.

That would come on top of the nearly 30,000 killings that have been recorded by enclave's health authorities since Israel began its invasion early October.

A middle-of-the-road projection

A middle-of-the-road tally based on the continuation of conditions that have existed in the past four months found that injuries and disease would kill 66,720 Palestinians in the next half-year.

A best-case scenario in which a ceasefire is brokered would still lead to the deaths of some 11,580 Palestinians. Just under half of those deaths would be attributed to epidemics.

"Our projections indicate that even in the best-case ceasefire scenario, thousands of excess deaths would continue to occur, mainly due to the time it would take to improve water, sanitation and shelter conditions, reduce malnutrition, and restore functioning healthcare services in Gaza," wrote the report's authors.

The project is expected to update its findings regularly through May as the situation on the ground evolves.

Rafah faces possible Israeli invasion

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned of ground invasion by the start of Ramadan next month if the more than 130 hostages held by Hamas are not freed.

In Gaza, the death toll from Israeli invasion rose to 29,092 since the start of the war, around two-thirds of them women and children, local authorities said.

More than 69,000 Palestinians have been wounded, overwhelming the territory's hospitals, less than half of which are even partially functioning.

Israel has said it is developing plans to expel civilians from Rafah, but it's not clear where they would go in the devastated territory, large areas of which have been flattened. Egypt has sealed the border and warned that any mass influx of Palestinians could threaten its decades-old peace treaty with Israel.

Already, the war has driven around 80 percent of the Palestinians in Gaza from their homes and has left a quarter of the population starving, according to UN officials.