STORY: :: May 14, 2024
An official Palestinian tally of direct deaths in the Israel-Hamas war likely undercounted the number of fatalities by tens of thousands as the Gaza Strip's healthcare infrastructure unravelled.
That's according to a peer-reviewed study published in the Lancet medical journal on Thursday.
Researchers estimated there were 64,260 deaths due to traumatic injury from Israel's air and ground campaign in Gaza in the first nine months of the war - from October 2023 to the end of June 2024.
That figure is 41% higher than the official Palestinian Health Ministry count for the time.
The Lancet study said nearly 60% of those killed were women, children and people over 65.
It did not provide an estimate of how many Palestinian combatants were among the dead.
:: May 21, 2024
The Lancet study said the Palestinian health ministry had maintained reliable electronic death records but its capacity to do so deteriorated under Israel's military campaign,
which has included raids on hospitals and other healthcare facilities and disruptions to digital communications.
:: Released November 11, 2023
:: Israeli Army Handout
Israel says it goes to great lengths to avoid civilians deaths and accuses Hamas of using hospitals as cover for its operations, which the militant group denies.
:: October 7, 2023
The war began on Oct. 7 2023 after Hamas gunmen stormed across the border with Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
:: January 30, 2024
Palestinian health officials currently put the death toll of the conflict at more than 46,000 people.
The Lancet study was conducted by academics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Yale University and other institutions.
:: May 14, 2024
Anecdotal reports suggested a significant number of dead lay under the rubble of Gaza and therefore missing from tallies.
So using data from at least two independent sources, researchers looked for individuals who appeared on multiple lists of those killed.
This method, called capture-recapture analysis, has been used to evaluate deaths in other conflict zones.
Less overlap between lists suggests more deaths have gone unrecorded, information that can be used to estimate the actual toll.
