War knocks Gaza back to 1950s: UNRWA chief

One year of the war between Israel and Hamas has set the Gaza Strip back to the early 1950s, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has said.

The war has devastated the Palestinian economy and left nearly all of Gaza's population in poverty, with life indicators like health and education regressing by 70 years, Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the UNRWA said on Wednesday in an X post, citing a recent UN study.

"The longer this goes on, the longer it takes to bring back hundreds of thousands of girls and boys to a learning environment, the more extreme the challenges will be to undo these huge losses," he added.

Israel has been launching a large-scale offensive against Hamas in Gaza to retaliate against a Hamas rampage through the southern Israeli border on 7 October 2023, during which about 1,200 people were allegedly killed and around 250 taken hostage. The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip has risen to 42,792, the Gaza-based health authorities said in a statement on Wednesday.