IDF: Civilian deaths less than 25% of total

Palestinian medical officials say Israel has killed 1,000 Palestinians, over half of them civilians.

gazan searches bombed house 248.88ap (photo credit: AP)
gazan searches bombed house 248.88ap
(photo credit: AP)
A maximum of 25 percent of the Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of Operation Cast Lead are innocent civilians, the head of the IDF's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), Col. Moshe Levi, said Wednesday. According to Palestinian medical officials, Israel has killed some 1,000 Palestinians since the fighting began in late December and more than half of them are civilians. The toll included 11 Palestinians killed Wednesday, medical officials said. Levi told reporters on Wednesday that the CLA had compiled a list with the names of 900 of the Palestinians killed during the fighting. He said that 150 names were of women, children and elderly and that the maximum number of civilians killed so far was 250. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released a report on Wednesday citing Palestinian Ministry of Health figures according to which 311 of the dead are children and 76 are women. The number of wounded, the report claims is 4,418, of whom 1,549 are children and 652 are women. Levi also dismissed OCHA's claim that 43 Palestinians were killed in an IDF attack on a Hamas terror cell that was firing mortars at Israeli forces from within an UNRWA school in Jabalya. Levi said that the CLA knew of 21 Palestinians killed in the attack, including a number of Hamas operatives.