Gaza death toll likely to be significantly higher than official figures, study finds
Jan. 10, 2025, 5:08 PM GMT+5
By Chantal Da Silva
The number of people killed in Gaza during Israel's deadly offensive in the Palestinian enclave is significantly higher than the figures reported by local health authorities, researchers at a leading health university in Britain have found.
In a peer-reviewed study published Thursday in The Lancet journal, researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said they estimated that as many as 64,260 people were killed in "traumatic injury deaths" in Gaza between Oct. 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024.
The authors of the study estimate that the death toll for the first nine months of the war was around 41% higher than the figure of 37,877 reported by the Palestinian health ministry.
Women, children under the age of 18 and people over 65 accounted for 59.1% of the 28,257 deaths for which age and sex data were available. Researchers did not provide an estimate of the number of Palestinian combatants killed. Health authorities in Gaza also do not publish data on militants killed.
The study suggests that the current death toll reported by Palestinian health authorities — at least 46,006 people killed as of Thursday — is also a significant under-count of the number of people killed during Israel's offensive.
"Although we only [analyzed] data up to June, 2024, the official [health ministry] estimate from Oct 7, 2023, to Oct 6, 2024, was 41,909," the study says, adding that if that level of under-reporting continued from July to October, 2024, it's possible that number of Palestinians killed in Gaza now exceeds 70,000.