A peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet estimates that more than 75,000 people were killed in Gaza during the first 16 months of Israeli attacks, a toll researchers say is significantly higher than the figure announced by authorities there. The analysis covers October 2023 through January 2025 and concludes Gaza’s health ministry is not inflating its numbers — if anything, it is undercounting the dead.
“We can conclude with great confidence that the ministry of health for Gaza is not inflating the death toll and in fact, it’s an undercount,” said Professor Michael Spagat, one of the study’s authors and an economics professor at Royal Holloway, University of London. Speaking on RTÉ’s News At One, Spagat said the new estimate indicates the overall toll is “quite a bit higher” than the official figure.
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The study’s headline number — more than 75,000 people killed between October 2023 and January 2025 — reflects what the authors describe as a substantial gap between reported fatalities and the likely total. While the paper does not claim to have a final tally, it argues that multiple lines of evidence support the conclusion that official reporting has missed many deaths amid protracted bombardment and displacement.
Spagat said the researchers found that about 56% of violent deaths were women, children or elderly people, a share he described as “extremely close” to the Gaza health ministry’s reporting for the same period. That alignment, he added, undercuts claims that the ministry’s demographic breakdowns are exaggerated.
The authors did not determine how many of those killed were Hamas fighters. However, Spagat said he believes “without any doubt” that combatant deaths are below 20% of the total, and “probably below 10%.” He cautioned that precise categorization will remain contentious and difficult to verify given the scale of destruction and the limits on sustained, independent access to the territory.
Establishing an authoritative death toll in a war zone is complex under any circumstances, and the study underscores how infrastructure collapse, repeated displacement and the intensity of strikes can obscure both the number and identities of the dead. Spagat said that attaining a far more accurate picture would require a long-term, resource-intensive effort of data collection and verification.
“We can, if we try, get a much more accurate picture of the people that were killed and who was killed than what we have right now, but it would take a major effort over a long time period,” he said. “I think it would probably take at least a decade of sustained research with a lot of funding.”
The Lancet paper adds peer-reviewed weight to a debate that has shaped international understanding of the war’s human cost. By finding that the official Gaza death toll is not exaggerated — and likely falls short — the analysis places the onus on governments, aid groups and investigators to plan for long-term documentation efforts even as urgent humanitarian needs persist.
Spagat emphasized that while the exact number of lives lost may never be known with complete confidence, the available evidence supports a clear conclusion: the scale of civilian harm has been immense, and the known figures understate it.
The study’s findings are likely to inform future legal, diplomatic and humanitarian assessments of the conflict, while renewing calls for transparent casualty reporting and improved protection of civilians.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
