Estimated Gaza Toll May Have Missed 25,000 Deaths, Study Says

Analysis found that more than 64,000 Palestinians may have been killed by traumatic injury in the first nine months of the war.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/14/health/gaza-death-toll.html

https://archive.ph/04bxq


The aftermath of Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis, south of the Gaza Strip, on Oct. 26, 2023. Credit...Yousef Masoud for The New York Times

Deaths from bombs and other traumatic injuries during the first nine months of the war in Gaza may have been underestimated by more than 40 percent, according to a new analysis published in The Lancet.

The peer-reviewed statistical analysis, led by epidemiologists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, used modeling in an effort to provide an objective third-party estimate of casualties. The United Nations has relied on the figure from the Hamas-led Ministry of Health, which it says has been largely accurate, but which Israel criticizes as inflated.

But the new analysis suggests the Hamas health ministry tally is a significant undercount. The researchers concluded that the death toll from Israel’s aerial bombardment and military ground operation in Gaza between October 2023 and the end of June 2024 was about 64,300, rather than the 37,900 reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The estimate in the analysis corresponds to 2.9 percent of Gaza’s prewar population having been killed by traumatic injury, or one in 35 inhabitants. The analysis did not account for other war-related casualties such as deaths from malnutrition, water-borne illness or the breakdown of the health system as the conflict progressed.

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