HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE DIED IN GAZA?

May 8, 2025

New research suggests the death toll may be higher than current reports

Since the war in Gaza began in October 2023 the death toll has been hotly contested. Counting deaths in any war that is still raging is very hard. But experts are still trying to keep track. And new research suggests the reported numbers are too low.
The precise daily counts from Gaza are unusual. No such tally emerges from Ukraine. But during this war, as in past ones, Gaza’s authorities, run by Hamas, have issued details of how many Palestinians have been killed. Doubts about such figures are reasonable. Hamas, presumably, has an incentive to inflate civilian losses. When previous conflicts ended, however, estimates from Israel and the UN of the numbers killed have roughly matched those released during the fighting. This war has been far more extensive and lasted longer than any in the past. Many of the institutions that count deaths, such as hospitals, have been destroyed.
As of May 5th, the health ministry said that 52,615 people had died in the war. As in previous wars, its tally does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. In January, Israel estimated that about 20,000 of those killed were militants.

The ministry uses two lists, one based on information from hospitals, the other from an online survey in which people reported deaths, along with other data, presumably of those who have died but have not been identified, to produce its official total. In a recent study in the Lancet researchers examined these two lists along with a third, which they collated using details from obituaries on social media (only including deaths from traumatic injuries). All three lists included the names and, usually, the age and sex of the dead. Some also had an ID number. Independent investigators have confirmed that those on the ministry’s two lists have almost certainly died.
The researchers disregarded the ministry’s official total. Instead they examined the overlap between the three lists, using data from the start of the war to June 30th 2024. They used this information to estimate how many people had probably died and then compared that with the ministry’s official total. So if all 30-year-old men on one list also appeared on the other two, all such deaths may have been counted. But if the three lists had different names, each list might well be very incomplete.

Chart: The Economist

The researchers found that the overlap was so small that the true number of deaths was probably 46-107% higher than the official ministry total. If you assume that the ratio has stayed the same since last June (and not fallen, as systems caught up during the ceasefire, say) and apply them to the current tally, it would suggest that between 77,000 and 109,000 Gazans have been killed, 4-5% of the territory’s pre-war population (see chart).
Huge uncertainty persists. The lists contain errors. Since the beginning of the war 3,952 people have appeared on one of the two lists compiled by the health ministry and subsequently been removed. Hamas fighters, presumably young men, may be disproportionately missing from the lists (if perhaps the group wanted to minimise its own losses) so the death toll could be higher. Unknown numbers, perhaps thousands, have perished because of a lack of medical care. A definitive count of how many have died in this war will be difficult, even after it ends. And that may still be a long way off.

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