A study published Friday in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet estimates that the number of deaths in Gaza, during the first nine months of the war between Israel and Hamas, is approximately 40% higher than that recorded by the Ministry of the Health of the Palestinian Territory.
The number of people killed in Gaza has been the subject of fierce debate since Israel launched its campaign against Hamas in response to the attack on its territory on October 7, 2023.
Since the start of the war until June 30 last year, the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip reported a death toll of 37,877.
The Lancet study, however, estimates that between 55,298 and 78,525 deaths were caused by traumatic injuries in Gaza during this period.
The probable number of deaths estimated by the Lancet is 64,260 deaths until this date, a figure 41% higher than that of the Ministry of Health. This figure represents 2.9% of Gaza’s population before the war, “or approximately one in 35 inhabitants”, according to the study.
This report only concerns deaths due to traumatic injuries and therefore does not include indirect deaths, such as those due to lack of care or food, nor the thousands of missing people believed to be buried under the rubble.
The AFP is unable to independently verify the number of deaths in Gaza.
On Thursday, the enclave’s health ministry said 46,006 people had died during the 15-month war, mainly in Israeli bombings.
In Israel, the bloody attacks committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023 left 1,208 dead, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
Israel has questioned the credibility of Gaza’s health ministry figures, but they have been deemed reliable by the United Nations.
Researchers in the study published by the Lancet used a statistical method called “capture-recapture” that has already been used to estimate the number of deaths in other conflicts around the world, which is based on three lists.
The first is that provided by the Ministry of Health and includes bodies identified in hospitals or morgues.
The second came from an online survey launched by the Health Ministry, in which Palestinians reported the deaths of their loved ones.
The third was established from obituaries published on social networks such as X, Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp, when the identity of the deceased could be verified.
“We only included in our study people whose death had been confirmed by their relatives or by morgues and hospitals,” Zeina Jamaluddine, epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told AFP. main author of the study.
The researchers then examined the death lists for duplicates. “We looked for overlaps between the three lists (…) in order to obtain a total estimate of the population killed,” said Ms. Jamaluddine.
Patrick Ball, a statistician with the US-based Human Rights Data Analysis Group who was not involved in the Lancet study, used the capture-recapture statistical method to estimate the number of deaths in conflicts in Guatemala, Kosovo, Peru and Colombia.
He assured AFP that this proven technique had proven itself over a long time and described the Lancet study as a “good estimate”.
Kevin McConway, professor of applied statistics at the British Open University, told AFP that there was “inevitably a lot of uncertainty” when making an estimate from incomplete data.
However, he found it “admirable” that the researchers used three methods of statistical analysis to verify their estimates. “Overall, I find these estimates reasonably convincing,” he said.
The study authors urged caution, explaining that lists published by hospitals do not always indicate the cause of death, so it is possible that people with non-traumatic health problems, such as a heart attack, were included, which could lead to an overestimation.
There are, however, other reasons why the toll of the war in Gaza may be underestimated.
The study did not take into account missing people. The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said around 10,000 missing Gazans were believed to be buried under the rubble.
Ms. Jamaluddine admitted that she expected “criticism to come from all sides” regarding this study. She spoke out against what she called “an obsession” with mortality figures: “we know that it is very high anyway,” she said.
