Gaza death toll grossly understated

A peer-reviewed analysis published in The Lancet on Thursday found that the official Gaza death toll reported by the enclave's Ministry of Health between October 07, 2023 and June 30, 2024 was likely a 41% undercount, a finding that underscores the devastation wrought by Israel's assault on the Palestinian territory and the difficulties of collecting accurate data amid relentless bombing.

During the period examined by the new study, Gaza's health ministry (MoH) reported that 37,877 people had been killed in Israeli attacks. But the Lancet analysis estimates that the death toll during that period was 64,260, with women, children, and the elderly accounting for nearly 60% of the deaths for which details were available. That count only includes "deaths due to traumatic injury," leaving out deaths from starvation, cold, and disease.

To reach their estimate, the authors of the new study "composed three lists from successive MoH-collected hospital morgue data, an MoH online survey, and obituaries published on public social media pages" and "manually scraped information from open-source social media platforms, including specific obituary pages for Gaza shaheed, martyrs of Gaza, and The Palestinian Information Center to create our third capture-recapture list."

"These pages are widely used obituary spaces where relatives and friends inform their networks about deaths, offer condolences and prayers, and honor people known as martyrs (those killed in war)," the authors write. "The platforms span multiple social media channels, including X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram. Throughout the study period, these pages were updated periodically and consistently, providing a comprehensive source of information on casualties. Obituaries typically included names, age at death, and date and location of death, and were often accompanied by photographs and personal stories. We translated English posts into Arabic to match names across lists and excluded deaths attributed to non-traumatic injuries."

The group of authors—which includes academics from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan—said the findings "show an exceptionally high mortality rate in the Gaza Strip during the period studied" and highlight "the urgent need for interventions to prevent further loss of life and illuminate important patterns in the conduct of the war."

Establishing an accurate count of the number of people killed in Israel's 15-month assault on the Gaza Strip, which began in the wake of a deadly Hamas-led attack, has been made extremely difficult by the Israeli military's incessant bombing and destruction of the enclave's medical infrastructure. There are also tens of thousands of people believed to be missing under the ruins of Gaza homes and buildings.

The Lancet study notes, "The escalation of Israeli military ground operations and attacks on healthcare facilities severely disrupted" Gaza officials' data-collection efforts. Prior to October 7, 2023, the MoH "had achieved good accuracy in mortality documentation, with underreporting estimated at 13%," the new analysis notes, and its figures were widely considered reliable.

Since Israel launched its catastrophic response to the Hamas-led attack, US lawmakers and leaders who have backed Israel's assault—including President Joe Biden—have openly cast doubt on the ministry's data. Currently, the MoH estimates that more than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 07, 2023.

Last month, the US Congress approved a sprawling military policy bill that included a provision barring the Pentagon from publicly citing as "authoritative" death toll figures from Gaza's health ministry. Biden signed the measure into law on December 23, 2024.

"This is an alarming erasure of the suffering of the Palestinian people, ignoring the human toll of ongoing violence," Rep. Ilhan Omar, who voted against the legislation, told The Intercept following House passage of the measure.