Gaza ceasefire 'exists in name only', 100-plus NGOs say one year on

More than 100 humanitarian, human rights and civil society organisations have declared that the Gaza ceasefire exists "in name only", a year after it was announced with United States backing. In a joint statement issued on Friday, the groups said Israeli forces are still killing and injuring Palestinians every day, while limits on aid deliveries, equipment and rebuilding materials are stopping families from recovering. Among the signatories were Amnesty International, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Save the Children, Oxfam and Greenpeace.

The statement said Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, including at least 327 children, in the year since US President Trump announced the deal to end hostilities under the Gaza Board of Peace framework. Figures cited in the statement put the toll at at least 1,471 Palestinians killed and 5,189 wounded since the ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025. Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said it was "utterly shameful" that so little had improved for Palestinians over that period.

Inger Ashing, chief executive of Save the Children, said a ceasefire is meaningless when children are still being killed and families cannot rebuild. According to the statement, nearly one child has been killed every day since the October 10, 2025 announcement. Over the three years since the war began in October 2023, the Palestinian Ministry of Health says more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed and 175,000 wounded — roughly one in every 13 people in Gaza. A later figure in the statement put the death toll at at least 74,254, including at least 21,000 children, about 3 percent of the enclave's pre-war population. The ministry counts only deaths recorded at hospitals or officially registered, meaning the true toll is likely far higher, with thousands still buried under rubble or missing.

Gaza's health system remains severely depleted, with none of its 36 hospitals operating at full capacity and widespread shortages of medicine, equipment and fuel, according to the ministry statement. It said more than 18,500 patients, among them at least 4,000 children, need medical evacuation, and more than 1,000 have died while waiting. A conservative World Health Organization estimate cited in the statement suggests about 24 percent of the wounded have life-changing injuries requiring long-term rehabilitation, a quarter of them children. Almost 2 million people need shelter in a territory where 80 percent of structures are damaged, and 1.4 million are facing crisis-level hunger or worse through the end of the year.

Egeland warned that Israeli restrictions on equipment and construction materials are still blocking the only means communities have to begin rebuilding. Friday's statement also accused Israeli forces of squeezing the population into an even more crowded environment by arbitrarily moving the so-called "Yellow Line", the buffer set up under last year's ceasefire framework to separate Israeli-controlled areas from Palestinian ones.

Violence continued on Friday, when Israeli forces shot dead at least one Palestinian after firing live ammunition at civilians in the al-Musaddar, Maghazi and Bureij refugee camp areas in central Gaza, which also came under heavy artillery shelling, according to Al Jazeera. In the southern city of Khan Younis, Israeli tanks directed heavy fire towards the Bani Suheila roundabout, where injuries were reported. At least eight Palestinians were killed and dozens injured on Thursday in air strikes and shelling across the Strip. Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, said accountability "cannot be buried under the rubble", arguing that the failure to hold Israel to the International Court of Justice's binding orders continues to fuel atrocity crimes on a mass scale.