A study published in the medical journal Lancet suggests that the Palestinian death toll from the war in Gaza may be significantly higher than official figures reported by the Hamas-run health ministry.
The British-led investigation covered the first nine months of the war, which began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
They used department data, an online survey of relatives who reported the death, and obituaries. The report estimates that 64,260 Palestinians have died from trauma by June 30, 2024, meaning that deaths are underreported by 41%.
The Israeli embassy in the UK, which serves Hamas, said: “We cannot trust any information received from Gaza.”
The United Nations treats the Ministry of Health’s figures as reliable.
The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but a recent United Nations report said the majority of confirmed casualties over a six-month period were women and children.
Israel says Hamas’s numbers are not reliable. In August, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that they had eliminated “more than 17,000 terrorists,” but it is unclear how they arrived at this number. The IDF claims it targets only combatants and seeks to avoid or minimize civilian casualties.
Israel does not allow international reporters from news organizations, including the BBC, to enter Gaza independently, making it difficult to ascertain facts on the ground.
The team behind the latest study used a statistical technique called “capture-recapture,” which has been used to assess deaths in other conflicts.
Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine looked at how many people repeatedly showed up in different attempts to count deaths. The level of overlap between these lists suggests that the number of deaths directly caused by trauma in conflict may be significantly higher than hospital statistics published by the Ministry of Health.
The Gaza Ministry of Health updates daily the number of deaths caused by the war. The report tallies deaths recorded in hospitals, those reported by families, and deaths from “credible media reports.”
The Lancet report estimates the death toll at 55,298 to 78,525, while the Ministry of Health’s report puts it at 37,877.
Report numbers can be significantly higher or lower depending on the technical details of the analysis.
For example, it can be difficult to identify “trauma” deaths in each dataset. If you get it wrong, your study’s estimates can go up or down.
The study also said 59% of deaths for which data on gender and age were available were women, children and the elderly.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas attacks that left around 1,200 people dead and 251 taken back to Gaza as hostages. In response, Israel launched a large-scale military offensive against Gaza.
The Health Ministry said 46,006 people were killed in Israeli military operations, most of them civilians.
