The death toll in the Gaza war could be significantly higher, researchers say

The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza war may be significantly higher than official figures reported by the Hamas-run Health Ministry, research published in the medical journal The Lancet suggests.

The UK-led investigation covered the first nine months of the warIt started when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.

It used data from the ministry, an online survey of relatives reporting the deaths, and obituaries. It estimated that 64,260 Palestinians had died from traumatic injuries by June 30, 2024, a 41 percent underreporting of deaths.

The Palestinian death toll has been a source of controversy, although the UN considers the health ministry’s figures reliable.

The Ministry’s figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians, although a The latest UN report he said most of the victims checked in six months were women and children.

Israel says Hamas figures cannot be trusted. In August, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had “eliminated more than 17,000 terrorists,” but it is unclear how it arrived at that number. The IDF insists that they only target combatants and try to avoid or minimize civilian casualties.

Israel does not allow international journalists from media organizations, including the BBC, independent access to Gaza, making it difficult to verify events on the ground.

The team behind the latest study used a statistical method called “capture-recapture”, a technique that has been used to assess deaths in other conflicts.

The researchers repeatedly looked at how many people appeared in different attempts to count the deaths. The degree of overlap between these lists suggested that the number of deaths directly attributable to traumatic injuries during the conflict may be significantly higher than hospital figures published by the Ministry of Health.

The Gaza Ministry of Health has updated the number of war casualties daily. It includes data on deaths registered in hospitals, deaths reported by relatives and deaths from “reliable media reports”.

The Lancet report estimated the death toll at between 55,298 and 78,525 people, compared to 37,877 reported by the Ministry of Health.

The figures in the report could be significantly higher or lower depending on the technical details of the analysis.

For example, it might be difficult to identify deaths from “traumatic injuries” in each data set. Getting it wrong can push your exam scores up or down.

According to the study, 59% of the dead for whom gender and age data were available were women, children and the elderly.

The war in Gaza was triggered by an attack by Hamas, in which around 1,200 people were killed and another 251 were taken as hostages to Gaza. Israel launched a major military offensive in Gaza.

The health ministry says 46,006 people, most of them civilians, have died as a result of the Israeli campaign.