Nearly 100,000 Palestinians—around 4% of Gaza’s population—have been killed in Israel’s war on the territory, according to a report published on Friday by Haaretz, Israel’s leading newspaper. The report, citing several studies by independent international experts, states that Gaza’s Health Ministry figures have significantly underestimated the real death toll.
While the ministry officially reported 56,300 deaths since October 2023, Haaretz notes that “more and more international experts are stating that not only is this list, with all the horror it embodies, reliable, but that it may even be very conservative in relation to reality.”
Among the sources cited is a comprehensive study led by Professor Michael Spagat, an economist at Royal Holloway, University of London, who is considered a leading global authority on mortality in conflict zones. Spagat’s team surveyed 2,000 households—around 10,000 people—in Gaza to assess the full human cost of the war, reports Haaretz.
“They concluded that, as of January 2025, some 75,200 people died a violent death in Gaza during the war, the vast majority caused by Israeli munitions,” the report stated.
In addition to direct casualties, Spagat and his colleagues also examined indirect deaths—those caused by hunger, cold, untreated diseases, and the complete collapse of Gaza’s health system under Israeli bombardment. Their estimate for excess mortality due to these war-related conditions stands at 8,540 deaths.
Since January 2025, the Gaza Health Ministry has reported more than 10,000 additional deaths, not including those in the excess mortality category.
The study’s findings are stark. According to the survey data, 56% of those killed were either children under 18 or women. “That’s an exceptional figure when compared with almost every other conflict since World War II,” Haaretz noted.
Spagat emphasized the scale of destruction: “I think we’re probably at something like 4% of the population killed. I’m not sure that there’s another case in the 21st century that’s reached that high.”
He added that the data position the Gaza war “as one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 21st century.”
“Even if the overall number of war victims in Syria, Ukraine and Sudan is higher in each case,” Haaretz wrote, “Gaza is apparently in first place in terms of the ratio of combatants to noncombatants killed, as well as in terms of rate of death relative to population size.”
The study also compared the proportion of women and children among the dead to other modern conflicts. In Gaza, their share is more than double that in Kosovo (20%), Syria (20%), Sudan (23%), and northern Ethiopia (9%).
Despite global calls for a cease-fire, Israel has continued its offensive on Gaza since October 2023. In November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Simultaneously, Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over its actions in the enclave.