Lancet study: Actual death toll in Gaza 41 percent higher
Last Updated on January 11, 2025 6:46 am
Israel’s inhumane aggression in Gaza has been going on for more than a year. The death toll is getting longer. The health ministry of the besieged territory is publishing the death toll every day.
According to them, the number of people killed in the Israeli attack in Gaza has exceeded 46,000. But questions have been raised about this number.
It is estimated that the actual number of deaths in Gaza in the first 9 months is about 41 percent higher than the figures of the health ministry of the valley.
This is the estimate made in a study published in the medical journal The Lancet on Thursday. Such information emerged in an AFP report on Friday.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel. In response, Israel launched an indiscriminate attack on Gaza. There has been debate since the beginning about how many Palestinians have lost their lives in this war.
According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, 37,877 people were killed in the war in the first nine months of last year, up to June 30.
But the Lancet, using the Gaza Health Ministry’s online survey and death reports published on social media, found that between 55,298 and 78,525 Palestinians died in Gaza in the first nine months of the war.
The study’s best estimate of the death toll in Gaza is that around 64,260 people died in the war. This means that the Gaza Health Ministry’s figures are missing about 41 percent of the deaths.
According to the Lancet study, the death toll in Gaza of 64,260 means that about 2.9 percent of the pre-war population of the war in the war was killed.
In other words, about one in every 35 people died.
The study on the death toll in Gaza was conducted by a team of UK-based researchers. Their study found that 59 percent of the dead were women, children and the elderly.
The Lancet study only counted people killed in airstrikes and explosions. That is, the study did not include deaths due to lack of healthcare or food, or thousands of people who went missing. It is feared that these missing people died after being buried under the rubble.
Zeina Jamaluddin, head of the research team and an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told AFP, “We only used the data in our analysis of deaths that were confirmed by relatives or morgues and hospital authorities.”
The Gaza war has already completed 15 months. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, the number of people killed in Gaza on Thursday stood at 46,06.
In October 2023, 1,208 people were killed in Hamas attacks in Israel. This is the official Israeli count.
Israel has repeatedly questioned the credibility of the figures released by the Gaza Health Ministry on the number of Palestinian deaths, but the United Nations considers these figures credible.