DUBAI (Reuters): Israeli strikes have killed 17,177 Palestinians in Gaza since Oct. 7 and 350 people have died in the past 24 hours, Gaza’s health ministry said on Thursday, adding that health services were barely functioning in the northern half of the besieged enclave.

Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra spoke in a brief news conference from Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza.

He said the ministry was urgently trying to reopen Al Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, located in Gaza City. Some 36 health workers remain in detention after being arrested by Israeli forces during the two-month-old war, including the director of Shifa, he said.

Israeli forces unleashed an aerial and ground blitz against Hamas in Gaza after a cross-border rampage by the enclave’s ruling Islamist group on Oct. 7.

Some 46,000 people in Gaza have been injured since then and fewer than 1.0 per cent have been evacuated via the Rafah Crossing to Egypt for treatment, Al-Qidra said on Thursday.