More Civilian Casualties Recorded In 2023 Since 2010, Figures Spiked After October 7 (image@UNRWA)
2023 marks the highest number of civilian casualties in more than a decade. The year has marked record number of deaths, injured by airstrike, bombs, and artilleries. An annual study says, this high number in human casualties was mainly due to Israel’s three-month long genocidal war in Gaza.
Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), which is a monitoring group, reported more than 33,846 non-combatants had been killed or wounded in 2023. The number is a 62 percent increase on last year. 2023 figure is the largest number the group has counted since they began the annual survey in 2010.
The total number of killed and wounded in 2023 alone exceeds the total casualty level recorded during the Syrian civil war and early western campaign against Islamic State, which was between 2013 and 2017. The number of casualties recorded during the five years in whole was 33,000.
The reports from AOAV are based on English-language reports on incidents of violence on global level, and most certainly, the number is believed to be an undercount of the number of killed and wounded, as media accounts may not have captured all dead and wounded.
Apart from the casualties from Gaza, war in Ukraine and Sudan has also contributed to the figures obtained. Ian Overton, AOAV’s executive director said that there had been a “massive spike” in the number of civilian casualties, since October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel. He said, “Gaza almost overwhelmed our capacity to record each individual and injuries reported strike”, as quoted by The Guardian.
According to AOAV, Israel’s Swords of Iron operation ahs accounted for 37 percentage of all civilian casualties in Gaza in the year 2023. AOVA recorded the civilian casualties in Gaza as 9,334 civilians killed and 3, 616 injured.
As foreign media were not allowed to go Gaza by Israel, the number might change. According Gaza Health Ministry, 22,835 Palestinians were killed in indiscriminate Israeli air strike, and further 58,416 has been wounded, since October 7th. Russia’s war on Ukraine has claimed lives of 8,351 civilians in whole year, and civil war in Sudan, which broke out in April this last year, has killed 2,546.
