AFP :
Research published in The Lancet medical journal on Friday estimates that the death toll in Gaza during the first nine months of the Israel-Hamas war was around 40% higher than recorded by the Palestinian territory’s health ministry.
The number of dead in Gaza has become a matter of bitter debate since Israel launched its military campaign against Hamas in response to the Palestinian group’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 resistance campaign.
Up to June 30 last year, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza reported a death toll of 37,877 in the war.
However the new peer-reviewed study used data from the ministry, an online survey and social media obituaries to estimate that there were between 55,298 and 78,525 deaths from traumatic injuries in Gaza by that time.
The study’s best death toll estimate was 64,260, which would mean the health ministry had under-reported the number of deaths to that point by 41%.
That toll represented 2.9% of Gaza’s pre-war population, “or approximately one in 35 inhabitants,” the study said.
The UK-led group of researchers estimated that 59% of the deaths were women, children and the elderly.
The toll was only for deaths from traumatic injuries, so did not include deaths from a lack of health care or food, or the thousands of missing believed to be buried under rubble. On Thursday, Gaza’s health ministry said that 46,006 people had died over the full 15 months of war.
Israel has repeatedly questioned the credibility of the Gaza health ministry’s figures, but the United Nations have said they are reliable.
The researchers used a statistical method called “capture-recapture” that has previously been used to estimate the death toll in conflicts around the world.
The analysis used data from three different lists, the first provided by the Gaza health ministry of the bodies identified in hospitals or morgues.
The second list was from an online survey launched by the health ministry in which Palestinians reported the deaths of relatives.
The third was sourced from obituaries posted on social media platforms such as X, Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp, when the identity of the deceased could be verified.
“We only kept in the analysis those who were confirmed dead by their relatives or confirmed dead by the morgues and the hospital,” lead study author Zeina Jamaluddine, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told AFP. The researchers scoured the lists, searching for duplicates.
“Then we looked at the overlaps between the three lists, and based on the overlaps, you can come up with a total estimation of the population that was killed,” Jamaluddine said.
Patrick Ball, a statistician at the US-based Human Rights Data Analysis Group not involved in the research, has used capture-recapture methods to estimate death tolls for conflicts in Guatemala, Kosovo, Peru and Colombia.
Ball told AFP the well-tested technique has been used for centuries and that the researchers had reached “a good estimate” for Gaza.
