The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to 62,744, with 158,259 others injured since the conflict between Hamas and Israel erupted on Oct 7, 2023, Gaza's health authorities said in a statement on Monday.
Over the past 24 hours alone, Israeli offensives in the enclave have killed 58 people and wounded 308 others, the statement noted.
Since Israel resumed military operations in Gaza on March 18 this year following a brief ceasefire, 10,900 people have been killed and another 46,218 injured, according to the statement.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched extensive bombing raids across the Gaza Strip early on Monday.
The airstrikes destroyed a residential building in the northwestern part of Gaza City, killing two people and injuring a number of others, according to a medical worker at Al-Shifa Hospital.
A tent housing displaced Palestinians was also hit in Israeli attacks on the southern city of Khan Younis, killing one and injuring seven.
In central Gaza's Deir al-Balah, an aid delivery team was targeted in an Israeli strike, killing three, according to the health authorities.
Medical institutes were also targeted by Israeli forces, including an attack on the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, where at least 14 people were killed, including three journalists.
Over 200 journalists have lost their lives in Israeli attacks on Gaza since Oct 2023.
According to records provided by local hospitals, 11 people died from hunger and malnutrition over the past 24 hours, including two children.
Medical institutes said the total death toll from famine and malnutrition in Gaza had reached 300, including 117 children.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) warned that malnutrition rates among children under five in the Gaza Strip doubled between March and June this year due to ongoing Israeli blockade.
Palestinian death toll in Gaza rises to 62,744
A Canadian historian has shed light on how the horrors of the Nanjing Massacre were largely forgotten in North America, making it susceptible for distortion and denial of crucial facts.
In an interview with China Media Group (CMG), David Wright, an associate professor at the Department of History in the University of Calgary's Faculty of Arts, emphasized that the truth of the massacre in Nanjing is beyond dispute, yet several generations later, the West has not adequately preserved the memories of this history.
"My mother's and father's generation, they were alive when the Rape of Nanking happened. They were horrified to listen to reports on radios. And especially after the war was over, when the Tokyo war crime trials began, a lot more detail about the Rape of Nanking came out. In North America, the wartime generation remembered it and remembered it well. But then the next generation, my generation, baby boomers, that abhorrence was not passed on to us adequately well," Wright said.
The notorious Nanjing Massacre by Japanese troops led to over 300,000 deaths in 1937. According to the historian, the accuracy of this figure is supported by a robust body of evidence, but Japan's right-wing forces have nonetheless attempted to deny the number of victims as well as the severity of the crimes. Often, these claims rely on the absence of physical remains of the victims.
"They're dumped into the river. They're burned, a lot of them. You cannot find the remains. So they think they can find one or two errors you've made about photographs and from that conclude that the entire Rape of Nanking never happened. It's just nonsense. There is abundant evidence that something very, very terrible did happen in Nanjing," Wright said.
"And the people who deny it, I mean, historically they are nihilists. For them, history is all about image, not about fact. And if that thing really did happen in Nanjing, that's an inconvenient fact and they want to try to erase it by denying it," he added.
The Nanjing Massacre occurred after Japanese troops captured the then-Chinese capital on Dec. 13, 1937. Over six weeks, they killed approximately 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers in one of the most barbaric episodes of World War II.
Truth of Nanjing Massacre allows no distortion: Canadian historian
Truth of Nanjing Massacre allows no distortion: Canadian historian
