Press Release
Gaza has More Rubble than Ukraine, and our Sisters and Children are the Majority of the Dead Buried Under It

The UN Women issued a report in April 2024, regarding the status of women and children in Gaza. Six months into the war, over 10,000 women have been killed, among them an estimated 6,000 mothers, leaving 19,000 children orphaned. Al Jazeera estimates that 25,000 women and children have been killed. With over 100 independent journalists killed and without an organised body of investigators allowed to be present in the region, it is very difficult to keep track of exact numbers, and we must assume that these figures are far below reality.

On the 2nd of May 2024, Charles Mungo Birch, head of UN Mine Action Service @UNMAS in Palestine made a global public statement. In his official press briefing the following was stated: "Gaza has more rubble than Ukraine, and to put that in perspective, the Ukrainian front line is 600 miles long, and Gaza is 25 miles long." He added that there are over 37 million tonnes of debris to clear away in Gaza once “Israel’s” war on the Strip is over.

The scale of the bombing and destruction is truly unprecedented in the history of the world, with the coalition of evil assistants to the slaughter found in the Western corrupt colonial governments and in their slaves in the form of all of the rulers in our Muslim lands. What we must realise in looking at the vast death toll of women and children is that many thousands of the women and children listed dead remain under the rubble he speaks about. Many died instantly while many died slow and agonising deaths over days waiting to be rescued with no one able to save them. Aid workers and neighbours, as well as family members, have reported that they could hear the screams of children and others alive, but due to lack of equipment or fuel to power rescue machinery, they had to leave them trapped to their inevitable fate.

Even the task of getting the dead out, in any event of body recovery, has faced huge challenges. Mungo explained that the rubble is heavily contaminated with UXO (Unexploded Ordinance) as well as the chemicals used in warfare. He added that over 800,000 tonnes of asbestos were also a real and present danger.

How can initiatives for women’s empowerment ever be taken seriously again!? Feminists and the international laws on women’s empowerment, violence against women and women’s rights have all proven to be empty lies, with these rules only used to attack the Islamic Shariah laws and control the spread of Islam. The UN Women launched its latest Gender Alert on Gaza six months into the war, with an estimated 6,000 mothers killed, leaving 19,000 children orphaned. Women who have survived the Jewish entity’s bombardment and ground operations have been displaced, widowed, maimed and are facing starvation. This is indeed a war against women and children.

For any Muslim woman who continues to have trust or hope in secular systems, laws and institutions to save their Muslims sisters in Gaza or elsewhere from slaughter and annihilation, surely now is the time you bury your hopes deep in the rubble and ruins of Western democracy, and instead join the call for the urgent establishment of the System of Allah (swt), the Khilafah (Caliphate) based upon the method of the Prophethood which would remove every puppet ruler in our lands and mobilise the Muslim armies to fulfil their obligation to Allah of protecting, defending and liberating the Muslims.

[وَمَن يُوَلِّهِمْ يَوْمَئِذٍ دُبُرَهُ إِلاَّ مُتَحَرِّفاً لِّقِتَالٍ أَوْ مُتَحَيِّزاً إِلَى فِئَةٍ فَقَدْ بَاء بِغَضَبٍ مِّنَ اللّهِ وَمَأْوَاهُ جَهَنَّمُ وَبِئْسَ الْمَصِيرُ]

“And whoever turns his back to them on such a day, unless swerving [as a strategy] for war or to join their own troops - he draws on himself the wrath of Allah, and his abode is Hell – and wretched is the destination (indeed)!” [Al-Anfal: 16]

Women’s Section
in the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir