Gaza's death toll is an underestimate, new report warns

Collecting data has become increasingly difficult in Gaza “due to the destruction of much of the infrastructure”, a new journal published in the Lancet has warned.

Authors of ‘Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential‘ warned that the ministry of health in Gaza “has had to augment its usual reporting, based on people dying in its hospitals or brought in dead, with information from reliable media sources and first responders. This change has inevitably degraded the detailed data recorded previously.”

As a result, they explained, the current figures of those killed in Gaza is “an underestimate”, especially as so much of the Strip lies in ruins, with people buried beneath the rubble.

In addition to the direct death toll resulting from air strikes, “armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence,” they added.

“Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases. The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population’s inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organisations still active in the Gaza Strip.”

At least 38,153 Palestinians have been killed and 87,828 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, according to the Ministry of Health’s figures. Over 10,000 are thought to be dead, trapped beneath the rubble. The bodies of scores of civilians remain unidentified after being mauled by dogs, run over by Israeli tanks or left to decompose by occupation forces until they are unrecognisable.

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