According to the study, more deaths than previously assumed

British researchers

New study: death toll in Gaza probably significantly higher than previously assumed

A new study from Britain looks at the death toll in Israel’s war on Gaza. She comes to the conclusion: The estimates so far may have been significantly too low. However, the investigation also has shortcomings.

A new study in the journal “The Lancet” comes to the conclusion that significantly more people were violently killed in the Gaza Strip in the first 15 months of the war than previously officially reported. The researchers from Royal Holloway University in London estimate the number of deaths due to violence to be around 75,200 by the beginning of January 2025 – around a third more than the figures at the time from the Ministry of Health in Gaza, which is controlled by the terrorist organization Hamas.

Israel attacked the terrorist organization’s positions in the Gaza Strip after Hamas attacked the Jewish state on October 7, 2023. The surprise attack killed more than 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 200 people into the Gaza Strip, some of whom were in the control of the terrorists for several years.

According to consistent reports from human rights organizations and UN experts, the attackers also used rape and other forms of sexual violence as a means of anti-Semitic terror.

The Israeli military’s attacks have destroyed more than 90 percent of all residential buildings in Gaza. According to the research team’s calculations, around 75,200 people in the Gaza Strip were killed by air strikes or Israeli soldiers between October 7, 2023 and January 5, 2025. This corresponds to around 3.4 percent of the pre-war population of around 2.2 million people.

In addition, the study estimates around 8,540 so-called indirect deaths. These are people who did not die directly as a result of fighting, but rather as a result of illness, a lack of medical care or the collapse of basic infrastructure.

In total, the researchers come to a figure of at least 83,740 people who were killed in connection with Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip. However, this number should be viewed with great caution. At least the investigation does not make a division into Hamas terrorists and civilians; this is not possible with the methodology used. Nor can it say, for example, how many people were killed by airstrikes that occurred because Hamas terrorists were in tunnels or command centers under civilian buildings.

The investigation is not based on individual death records from the Ministry of Health in the Palestinian Territory, which is run by the terrorist organization Hamas, but on a population-based survey. Between December 30, 2024 and January 5, 2025, the researchers surveyed 2,000 households in the Gaza Strip. A total of 9,729 people living in a household in Gaza on October 6, 2023, as well as children who were born after the start of the war, were recorded.