Shocking figures: The number of dead in Gaza could reach 109,000.

The Economist reported last week that since the war on Gaza began in October 2023, the death toll has been hotly contested, as counting the dead in any ongoing war is extremely difficult. But experts are still trying to track them, and new research suggests the reported numbers are far too low.

Accurate daily figures from Gaza are unusual, according to the magazine's report, which notes that such statistics have not been available from the Ukraine war, for example. However, during this war, as in previous ones, Gaza's health authorities released details of the number of Palestinian deaths.

The magazine notes, “Doubts about these figures are reasonable, as Hamas presumably has an incentive to inflate civilian casualties. However, when previous conflicts ended, Israeli and UN estimates of the death toll were roughly identical to those issued during the fighting. This war was more comprehensive and lasted longer than any previous one. Many institutions that count deaths, such as hospitals, were destroyed. As of May 5, the Gaza Health Ministry announced that 52,615 people had been killed in the war, without specifying the number of combatants killed as in previous wars. Israel estimated last January that about 20,000 of the dead were militants.”

The Gaza Ministry of Health uses two lists—one based on hospital information and the other from an online survey in which people reported deaths—along with other data, presumably related to those who died but were not identified, to compile the official totals. In a recent study published in The Lancet, researchers examined these two lists along with a third, compiled using details from social media obituaries (which only included deaths resulting from injuries caused by Israeli shelling and attacks by the Israeli military). All three lists included the names of those killed, typically their ages and gender. Some also included an ID number. Independent investigators confirmed that those on both ministry lists were likely dead.

The researchers ignored the ministry's official total. Instead, they examined the overlap between the three lists, using data from the start of the war until June 30, 2024. They used this information to estimate the number of people likely to have died and then compared it to the ministry's official total. If all 30-year-old men on one list also appeared on the other two, all these deaths might have been counted. But if the three lists had different names, each list could be completely incomplete.

The researchers found that the overlap was so small that the true death toll was likely 46% to 107% higher than the ministry's official total. If we assume that the rate has remained unchanged since last June (and did not decrease, as other statistical systems have done, for example, during a ceasefire) and apply it to the current count, this would indicate that between 77,000 and 109,000 Gazans were killed, equivalent to 4-5% of the Strip's pre-war population.

The magazine notes that there is still a huge amount of uncertainty, as the lists contain errors. Since the beginning of the war, the names of 3,952 people appeared on one of the two lists compiled by the Health Ministry, only to be subsequently deleted. Hamas fighters, most likely young, may be disproportionately absent from the lists (perhaps because the movement wanted to minimize its losses), so the death toll could be higher. An unknown number, perhaps in the thousands, also died due to lack of medical care. It will be difficult to determine the exact death toll in this war, even after it ends.

It's worth noting that the British medical journal The Lancet published a report in July 2024 stating that the actual death toll in Gaza due to the war could reach 186,000 or even more, representing approximately 8% of Gaza's population. The report then addressed how the war leads to indirect deaths due to a lack of medical care, food, shelter, and water.