Palestinian health officials say Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza has killed more than 38,000 people, mostly civilians, and forced most of the territory’s 2.3 million people from their homes.
The war began on October 7 when Hamas activists crossed the border into Israeli communities. Israel says the activists killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 253 people prisoner in Gaza.
This explanation covers how the Palestinian death toll is calculated, how reliable it is, the details of civilians and combatants killed, and what each side says.
How do Gaza health officials calculate death tolls?
In the first months of the war, death tolls were calculated solely by counting bodies arriving at hospitals, and the figures included the names and identification numbers of most of the dead.
As the conflict escalated, and hospitals and morgues became short-suffering, authorities resorted to other methods.
Since early May, the Health Ministry has updated its details of total deaths to include unidentified bodies, which make up about a third of the total. Omar Hussein Ali, head of the ministry’s emergency operations center in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said these were bodies that arrived at hospitals or medical centers without personal data such as identification numbers or full names.
It also began to include deaths reported online by family members, who were required to enter other information, including identification numbers.
Is the death toll in Gaza extensive?
The Palestinian Health Ministry says these numbers “do not necessarily reflect all victims, as many are still missing under the rubble.” In May it estimated that about 10,000 bodies remained uncounted.
The Lancet medical journal published a paper by three academics on 5 July estimating that indirect deaths caused by factors such as disease could mean the death toll is many times higher than official Palestinian estimates.
The letter states that “it is not impossible to estimate that the current conflict in Gaza could result in the deaths of as many as 186,000 people or even more.”
The authors said the figure, which made global headlines, was based on a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths and one direct death based on trends from past conflicts.
The United Nations Human Rights Office and the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Laboratory also said during the conflict that the actual toll was likely higher than published figures, though they did not provide details.
How reliable are the Gaza death tolls?
Public health experts told Reuters that pre-war Gaza had robust population statistics and a better health information system than most Middle Eastern countries.
A WHO spokesperson said the ministry had “good data collection/analysis capabilities and its past reporting has been considered reliable”.
The United Nations regularly cites the ministry’s death figures, naming the ministry as the source.
Early in the conflict, when US President Joe Biden expressed doubts about the casualty count, the health ministry published a detailed list of the 7,028 deaths recorded up to that time.
Academics who looked at details of the listed casualties said in a peer-reviewed article published in the Lancet medical journal in November that it was implausible that the patterns depicted in the list could be fabricated.
However, there are specific questions about the inclusion of the 471 people killed in the October 17 explosion at Gaza City’s Al-Ahli al-Arab hospital. A declassified US intelligence report has estimated the death toll to be “on the low end of the 100 to 300 spectrum”.
Does Hamas control these figures?
Although Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007, the territory’s health ministry is also answerable to the overall Palestinian Authority ministry based in Ramallah in the West Bank.
Gaza’s Hamas-run government has paid the salaries of all those appointed to public departments, including the health ministry, since 2007. The Palestinian Authority still pays the salaries of those appointed before that.
The extent of Hamas control in Gaza is now difficult to assess, as Israeli forces have captured much of the area, including areas around major hospitals reporting casualties, and fighting continues.
What does Israel say?
Israeli officials have said the figures are suspect because Hamas controls the government in Gaza. Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Mamorstein said the figures were manipulated and “do not reflect the reality on the ground”.
However, the Israeli military has also acknowledged in briefings that the total casualty figures in Gaza are broadly reliable.
In May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war had killed 14,000 Hamas fighters and 16,000 Palestinian civilians.
How many civilians have been killed?
The Health Ministry figures do not distinguish between civilians and Hamas fighters, who do not wear formal uniforms or carry separate identification cards.
Israel periodically releases estimates of how many Hamas fighters it says have been killed. The most recent estimate was from Netanyahu, who estimated 14,000 fighters were killed.
Israeli security officials say such estimates are based on battlefield body counts, intercepts of Hamas communications and intelligence assessments of people present at destroyed targets.
Hamas has said Israeli estimates of its losses are exaggerated but has not said how many of its fighters have been killed.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says more than 70% of the dead are women and children. For most of the conflict, its figures put the number of children dead at just over 40%.
However, the fighting has made data collection conditions in hospitals worse and many of those killed cannot be identified because of their injuries.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
