The Pales­tin­ian death toll from the war be­tween Is­rael and Hamas has soared past 25,000, the Health Min­istry in the Gaza Strip said Sun­day, while the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment ap­peared far from achiev­ing its goals of crush­ing the mil­i­tant group and free­ing more than 100 hostages.

The lev­el of death, de­struc­tion and dis­place­ment from the war al­ready is with­out prece­dent in the decades-old Is­raeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict. Yet Is­raeli of­fi­cials say the fight­ing is like­ly to con­tin­ue for sev­er­al more months.

The slow progress and the plight of the hostages held in Gaza have di­vid­ed or­di­nary Is­raelis and their lead­ers even as the of­fen­sive threat­ens to ig­nite a wider war in­volv­ing Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Syr­ia, Iraq and Yemen that sup­port the Pales­tini­ans.

The Unit­ed States, which has pro­vid­ed es­sen­tial diplo­mat­ic and mil­i­tary sup­port for the of­fen­sive, has had lim­it­ed suc­cess in per­suad­ing Is­rael to adopt mil­i­tary tac­tics that put civil­ians at less risk and to fa­cil­i­tate the de­liv­ery of more hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid. Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu al­so has re­ject­ed U.S. and in­ter­na­tion­al calls for post­war plans that would in­clude a path to Pales­tin­ian state­hood.

GAZA DEATH TOLL CLIMBS AMID BLIS­TER­ING OF­FEN­SIVE

The war be­gan with Hamas’ sur­prise at­tack in south­ern Is­rael on Oct. 7, dur­ing which Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants killed some 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, and took around 250 hostages back to Gaza.

Is­rael re­spond­ed with a blis­ter­ing three-week air cam­paign and then a ground in­va­sion in­to north­ern Gaza that laid waste to en­tire neigh­bour­hoods. Ground op­er­a­tions are now fo­cused on the south­ern city of Khan You­nis and built-up refugee camps in cen­tral Gaza dat­ing back to the 1948 war sur­round­ing Is­rael’s cre­ation.

Is­rael con­tin­ues to car­ry out airstrikes through­out the be­sieged ter­ri­to­ry, in­clud­ing ar­eas in the south where it told civil­ians to seek refuge. Many Pales­tini­ans have ig­nored evac­u­a­tion or­ders, say­ing nowhere feels safe.

Since the war start­ed, a to­tal of 25,105 Pales­tini­ans have been killed in Gaza, while an­oth­er 62,681 have been wound­ed, the Health Min­istry re­port­ed Sun­day. The death toll in­clud­ed the 178 bod­ies brought to Gaza’s hos­pi­tals since Sat­ur­day, Health Min­istry spokesper­son Ashraf al-Qidra said. An­oth­er 300 peo­ple were wound­ed in the past day, he said.

The over­all toll is thought to be even high­er be­cause many ca­su­al­ties re­main buried un­der the rub­ble from Is­raeli strikes or in ar­eas where medics can­not reach them, Al-Qidra said.

The Health Min­istry does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants in its fig­ures but says around two-thirds of the peo­ple killed in Gaza were women and mi­nors.

The min­istry is part of the Hamas-run gov­ern­ment, but its ca­su­al­ty fig­ures from pre­vi­ous wars were large­ly con­sis­tent with those of U.N. agen­cies and even the Is­raeli mil­i­tary.

The Is­raeli mil­i­tary says it has killed around 9,000 mil­i­tants, with­out pro­vid­ing ev­i­dence, and blames the high civil­ian death toll on Hamas be­cause it po­si­tions fight­ers, tun­nels and oth­er mil­i­tant in­fra­struc­ture in dense neigh­bour­hoods, of­ten near homes, schools or mosques.

The mil­i­tary says 195 of its sol­diers have been killed since the start of the Gaza of­fen­sive.

The war has dis­placed some 85% of Gaza’s res­i­dents from their homes, with hun­dreds of thou­sands pack­ing in­to U.N.-run shel­ters and tent camps in the south­ern part of the tiny coastal en­clave. U.N. of­fi­cials say a quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion of 2.3 mil­lion is starv­ing as on­ly a trick­le of hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid reach­es them be­cause of the fight­ing and Is­raeli re­stric­tions.

IS­RAELIS IN­CREAS­ING­LY DI­VID­ED

Ne­tanyahu has vowed to keep up the of­fen­sive un­til Is­rael achieves “com­plete vic­to­ry” over Hamas and re­turns all the re­main­ing hostages. But even some top Is­raeli of­fi­cials have be­gun to ac­knowl­edge that those goals might be mu­tu­al­ly ex­clu­sive.

Hamas is be­lieved to be hold­ing the cap­tives in tun­nels deep un­der­ground and us­ing them as shields for its top lead­ers. Is­rael has on­ly man­aged to res­cue one hostage since the war be­gan, and Hamas says sev­er­al have been killed in Is­raeli airstrikes or dur­ing failed res­cue op­er­a­tions.

A mem­ber of Is­rael’s War Cab­i­net, for­mer army chief Ga­di Eisenkot, said last week that the on­ly way to free the re­main­ing hostages was through a cease-fire. In an im­plic­it crit­i­cism of Ne­tanyahu, he said claims to the con­trary amount­ed to “il­lu­sions.”

Hamas has said it will not free more hostages un­til Is­rael ends its of­fen­sive. The group al­so is ex­pect­ed to make any fur­ther re­leas­es con­di­tion­al on se­cur­ing free­dom for thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans im­pris­oned in Is­rael, in­clud­ing high-pro­file mil­i­tants in­volved in at­tacks that killed Is­raelis.

Is­rael’s gov­ern­ment has ruled that out for now, but it faces ris­ing pres­sure from fam­i­lies of the hostages, who are push­ing for an­oth­er ex­change, and from Is­raelis frus­trat­ed by the se­cu­ri­ty fail­ures that pre­ced­ed the Oct. 7 at­tack and by Ne­tanyahu’s han­dling of the war.

Thou­sands of peo­ple gath­ered in Tel Aviv over the week­end to call for new elec­tions.

Ne­tanyahu’s far-right coali­tion part­ners are mean­while push­ing him to step up the of­fen­sive, with some call­ing for the “vol­un­tary” em­i­gra­tion of hun­dreds of thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans from Gaza and the re-es­tab­lish­ment of Jew­ish set­tle­ments there. Is­rael with­drew sol­diers and set­tlers from the ter­ri­to­ry in 2005, two years be­fore Hamas seized pow­er from ri­val Pales­tin­ian forces.

Magdy re­port­ed from Cairo.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) —