Hamas rejects claims by Netanyahu about death numbers in Gaza

GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) – Hamas rejected a claim Friday about the ratio of civilian deaths to its fighters in the Gaza Strip made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling it a “lie and a contempt for global public opinion.”

The Palestinian resistance group said Netanyahu seeks to “cover up the enormity of what his army committed of unprecedented war crimes and genocide in our contemporary history,” with his statement.

It added that daily reports by the Gaza Health Ministry and other rights groups “confirm that the vast majority of victims in the Gaza Strip are civilians, particularly children and women, whom [sic] have perished in the brutal and indiscriminate bombardment” by the Israeli army.

In an interview with the Punchbowl news portal from the US, Netanyahu said, “The ratio of civilians to combatant casualties in Gaza is roughly one to one,” and claimed it “is the lowest in modern urban warfare.”

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation of its continued attacks on Gaza.

More than 37,400 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and over 85,600 others injured, according to local health authorities.

More than eight months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.