Hours after his last embrace with his wife and twins, he learned they had been killed

(CNN) — More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war on Hamas following the group’s October 7 attack, the health ministry in the enclave said Thursday, yet another dark milestone in the 10-month-old conflict.

The ministry said 40 people had died in Gaza during the past 24 hours, taking the total number of deaths since October 7 to 40,005 – about one in every 55 people in the enclave. More than 92,401 have been injured.

The health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its figures but says most of the dead are women and children. Israel said last month that it had killed more than 17,000 combatants in Gaza since the start of the war. CNN cannot independently verify the ministry’s numbers.

In addition, at least another 10,000 people are missing and believed to be buried under rubble in Gaza, the Gaza government’s media office said earlier this week.

The soaring figures give a window into the daily suffering, malnutrition and volatility in Gaza after 10 months of conflict.

United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has described it as “a very grim milestone at the world’s watch,” on X, adding that it is “a direct result of a collective failure to reach a ceasefire.”

And the milestone has been passed at a particularly unpredictable point in the conflict. A new round of ceasefire talks are due to begin Thursday, after the killings of senior figures in Hamas and the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah upended the leadership of both organizations and made the negotiations appear precarious.

The news follows an especially deadly weekend for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. At least 93 people were killed overnight into Saturday when an Israeli strike hit a school and mosque in the eastern part of Gaza City where displaced people were sheltering, according to local officials. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed to CNN that it hit the compound, saying its air force “precisely struck Hamas terrorists operating within a Hamas command and control center embedded” in the building.

Israeli military officials have said they try to minimize harm to civilians in Gaza and that Hamas bears the blame for using civilians as “human shields.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed to CNN that it hit the compound and said that “at least 19 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were eliminated” in the strike. It later said it had identified 12 more militants who were killed in the strike.

The strike was almost universally condemned, including by some of Israel’s closest allies.

Thursday marks “a grim milestone for the world,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said after the figures were announced. “Most of the dead are women and children. This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the Israeli Defense Forces to comply with the rules of war.”

Fading hopes for a ceasefire

Israel launched its war against Hamas after the militant group’s cross-border October 7 attacks, in which more than 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities. More than 100 of those hostages remain in Gaza, their families back home pleading for a breakthrough to secure their safe return.

Hopes of a hostage-for-ceasefire agreement seemed to diminish in recent weeks after Israel launched a series of strikes against senior figures in Hamas and in Hezbollah, which has been sparring with Israel on a near-daily basis since October, in solidarity with Hamas.

But Egyptian and Qatari mediators have conveyed to Israeli officials in recent days that Yahya Sinwar, the new head of its political bureau following the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, wants a ceasefire deal, an Israeli source familiar with the matter said.

Israel said it would send a delegation to the talks. Hamas, however, has said it will not participate in talks Thursday but is willing to speak to mediators afterwards if there are “developments or a serious response from Israel,” the source told CNN.

A hardliner and, according to Israel, one of the masterminds behind the deadly October 7 terror attacks, Sinwar was previously believed to be dismissive of a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Hamas said Sunday it has asked mediators to implement a ceasefire plan based on previous ceasefire talks such as those put forward by US President Joe Biden and the UN Security Council in July.

International pressure is intensifying for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach an agreement with Hamas.

A drumbeat of Western criticism of Netanyahu’s actions has grown louder in recent weeks, with the election of a Labour government in the United Kingdom and the confirmation of US Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for November’s presidential election. Harris’ comments on Gaza signal a shift in tone from Biden’s steady support of Israel.

Harris said Saturday that “far too many” civilians have been killed in Gaza, saying a deal “needs to get done now.”

And Netanyahu faces anger from some quarters at home. The Hostage and Missing Families Forum, a powerful voice in Israel, has for months repeatedly called on Israel and Hamas to finalize a hostage-and-ceasefire deal.

“A deal is the only path to bring all hostages home. Time is running out. The hostages have no more to spare. A deal must be signed now!” the forum said in a statement last week.

A humanitarian catastrophe

A ceasefire deal would provide a reprieve for the approximately 2.2 million Palestinians who have been living in nightmarish conditions in Gaza.

Nearly everyone living in Gaza has been displaced in the conflict, with many people forced to flee repeatedly as the Israeli military operation expanded, often into places it previously said had been cleared of Hamas fighters.

In recent days, some 75,000 people southwest Gaza after Israeli evacuation orders were issued, according to UNRWA chief Lazzarini.

Less than a sixth of the area of Gaza is not under Israeli evacuation orders, Lazzarini said late last month.

“Quite often, people have just a few hours to pack whatever they can & start all over again, mostly on foot or on a crowded donkey cart for those who can afford it,” he said Sunday on the social media platform X.

So dire are conditions in Gaza that gravediggers in the enclave are struggling to find space to bury those who have died. A grave digger in Khan Younis, Najy Abu Hateb, told Reuters he is “exhausted.”

“Since the war began, we haven’t stopped for even a minute, and we hope the war ends … there’s no place (to bury people),” Hateb said.

Hateb said gravediggers have been forced to dig up old graves to bury the new bodies. “We have reached a situation that forced us to bury people even with sand, placing bodies on top of one another,” he added.

Earlier this week Fikr Shalltoot, the Gaza Director for aid group Medical Aid for Palestinians, said the impending milestone “means that 40,000 families are grieving, and their hearts are broken.”

“Many people are losing hope and some are losing faith, but mostly people are losing trust in the international community. They are angry and disappointed and believe that the world has failed them and let them down,” she said in a statement.

This story has been updated.

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