The figures of the Ministry of Health of the United Nations are considered accurate.
The ministry’s figures do not distinguish combatants from civilians, but the latest UN report said most of the confirmed victims during the six-month period were women and children.
Israel says Hamas data cannot be trusted. In August, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had “killed more than 17,000 terrorists,” although it is unclear how they arrived at that figure. The IDF insists it only targets combatants and tries to avoid or minimize civilian casualties.
Israel does not allow international journalists from media organizations, including the BBC, independent access to Gaza, making fact-checking on the ground difficult.
The team behind the latest study used a statistical method called capture-recapture, a method used to estimate deaths in other conflicts.
Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine looked at how many people showed up more than once in different attempts to count deaths. The level of overlap between these lists suggests that the number of deaths directly caused by traumatic injuries in the conflict may be much higher than hospital figures published by the Ministry of Health.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health releases daily updates on war casualties. It combines figures for deaths reported in hospitals, deaths reported by family members and deaths from “reliable media reports”.
The Lancet report estimated the death toll at between 55,298 and 78,525, compared with the 37,877 reported by the health ministry.
Report numbers can be much higher or lower depending on the technical details of the analysis.
For example, identifying deaths by “traumatic injury” in each data set can be difficult. The error could push the study’s estimates higher or lower.
The study also said that 59% of those killed, for whom gender and age data were available, were women, children and the elderly.
The war in Gaza was sparked by a Hamas attack that killed around 1,200 people and took 251 others back to Gaza as hostages. In response, Israel launched a massive military offensive against Gaza.
The Ministry of Health claims that the Israeli campaign has killed 46,006 people, most of them civilians.
