More than 75,000 Palestinians were killed in the first 15 months of Israel’s military assault on Gaza, a number far higher than the 49,000 deaths announced by local health authorities at the time, says a new study in the medical journal The Lancet Global Health.
The peer-reviewed study, published on Wednesday, concluded that women, children and the elderly accounted for about 56.2% of violent deaths in Gaza during that period, a breakdown that, according to the study, is in line with reports from the Gaza Ministry of Health.
The fieldwork was conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Surveys, run by Palestinian researcher Khalil Shikaki, who has been conducting public opinion polls in the West Bank and Gaza for decades. The lead author is Michael Spagat, professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.
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The study is the first independent survey of mortality in the Gaza Strip, according to its authors, whose research involved surveying 2,000 Palestinian families over seven days, starting on December 30, 2024.
“The combined evidence suggests that, as of January 5, 2025, 3% to 4% of the population of the Gaza Strip had been violently killed and there were a substantial number of non-violent deaths caused indirectly by the conflict,” the authors wrote.
The UN has long considered the Ministry’s figures to be reliable
The death toll in Gaza has been hotly contested since the start of the Israeli offensive, following the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023 on southern Israel. Gaza health authorities, whose figures the UN has long considered reliable, report more than 72,000 dead and estimate that thousands more remain unaccounted for under destroyed buildings 28 months later.
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Israel questions those numbers, citing Hamas’ control of the ministry, although a senior military official told Israeli media last month that the numbers were largely accurate — an opinion the army later said did not reflect official data.
The Lancet researchers said their analysis contradicts inflation claims and suggests the ministry’s figures are actually conservative under extreme conditions.
Mortality calculation based on face-to-face interviews
Researchers who published a statistical analysis last year for The Lancet, its leading scientific journal, concluded that the Ministry of Health likely underestimated deaths by around 40% during the first nine months of the war. New research published Wednesday appears to suggest an underestimate by a similar margin.
The field team, made up mainly of women with research experience, conducted face-to-face interviews with Palestinian families from different districts of Gaza, the authors wrote. The questionnaire, reviewed by Reuters, asks respondents to list the people in their immediate family who were killed.
“We calculated mortality estimates as weighted sums. Each individual in the sample was assigned a weight representing the number of people in the Gaza Strip they represent,” the authors wrote.
The authors wrote that the survey was the first on mortality in Gaza that did not rely on administrative records from the Ministry of Health. They said their results on violent deaths had a 95% confidence interval, a value that indicates how accurately a researcher captured a piece of data.
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There were about 16,300 nonviolent deaths during the first 15 months of the war, caused by illness, pre-existing conditions, accidents or other causes not directly related to combat, the authors wrote. These deaths are distinct from the estimated 75,200 violent deaths during that period.
Hamas-led militants killed more than 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages during their 2023 attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli data. The hostages and remains of those killed in captivity were released during the ceasefires.
Hamas has confirmed the deaths of military leaders in fighting with Israel, but has rarely publicized deaths among its fighters.
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