More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, the territory's health ministry says

More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the region's health ministry said on Thursday.

The Israeli offensive also injured 92,401 people and drove over 85 percent of the population from their homes, the ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza said. The offensive makes no distinction between civilians and militants in terms of the number of casualties.

The announcement came as international mediators made further efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in the war, which has now lasted for eleven months.

The conflict began on October 7 after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking about 250 hostages to Gaza.

According to Israel, 111 of the prisoners, including the bodies of 39, have not yet been released. Among the hostages are 15 women and two children under the age of five.

In Gaza, health authorities are struggling to identify the dead as bodies pour into overcrowded hospitals and morgues, where they say the death toll is being tallied amid the chaos of war and displacement.

In its latest detailed death toll report on Thursday, the ministry put the death toll at 40,005. Health officials and civil defense workers say the real number is probably thousands higher, as many bodies are still buried under the rubble of buildings destroyed by the airstrikes.

The Israeli air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip was one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history.

The bombing and shelling have killed entire Palestinian families. Since cemeteries are often inaccessible, families fleeing Israeli airstrikes bury their dead wherever possible – in backyards, on the side of the road and under the stairs of their homes.

Israel says it wants to eliminate Hamas. It blames Hamas for civilian deaths because the militants operate in civilian areas and have built an extensive network of tunnels beneath them. Israeli forces have regularly attacked mosques, schools, hospitals and cemeteries where they say they have militants or tunnels, often resulting in civilian casualties.

In addition, 329 Israeli soldiers were killed in the fighting. The Israeli military claims that around 15,000 of the soldiers killed in Gaza were Hamas fighters, but has not provided any evidence for this.

Nearly 85 percent of Gaza's 2.3 million residents were displaced from their homes, fleeing through the area several times to escape ground offensives. Thousands were also displaced within Israel and southern Lebanon during the war.

The attack has triggered a massive humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with the entire territory at high risk of famine and over 495,000 people – more than a fifth of the population – expected to experience severe hunger in the coming months, according to the latest report from the leading agency measuring hunger.

Sewage systems have been destroyed and puddles of sewage and towers of garbage have formed in tent camps full of displaced families.

According to an analysis of satellite data by Corey Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek, experts in mapping war damage, the offensive likely damaged or destroyed 59 percent of all buildings in Gaza as of July 3, including 70 percent of buildings in northern Gaza.

The conflict has raised fears of a wider regional war, with Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Israeli military firing at each other almost daily across their countries' borders.

On the Lebanese side, more than 500 people were killed, including about 350 Hezbollah members and 50 fighters from other militant groups. The rest were civilians. In Israel, 22 soldiers and 24 civilians were killed.