IDF Accepts Gaza Health Ministry Death Toll of Over 71,000 Palestinians Killed During the War. Several studies raise possibility Gaza death toll is even higher than Health Ministry reports.

[Sid Shniad]

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Haaretz                                                                                                                              January 29 2026 

IDF Accepts Gaza Health Ministry Death Toll of Over 71,000 Palestinians Killed During the War

Although many international experts have accepted the Health Ministry's data as reliable, and even conservative relative to the true death toll, Israel had refused to accept the Health Ministry's count until now.

Destruction in the central Gaza Strip on Wednesday. Credit: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP

Yaniv Kubovich

and 

Nir Hasson

The IDF has accepted the estimate of the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry that approximately 71,000 Palestinians were killed during the Israel-Gaza war, noting that the number does not include missing residents who are potentially buried under rubble.

The IDF also said it is currently analyzing the data on the dead to see how many of them are combatants and how many are civilians. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 71,667 Gazans have been killed by IDF fire since the beginning of the war on October 7, 2023.

The Ministry's tally includes only those killed directly by Israeli military fire in its tracking, not people who died of starvation or from diseases exacerbated by the war.

The records published by the Gaza Ministry of Health identify over 90 percent of the bodies by name and identification numbers, but do not distinguish between militants and civilians.

The data published by the Health Ministry regarding the dead and wounded in the Gaza Strip have been examined since the beginning of the war by many international organizations, governments, media outlets, and researchers, and there is broad agreement that they are reliable. Nevertheless, Israel has never officially accepted the number, and the Foreign Ministry has even called it "misleading and unreliable."

Burial in a mass grave in Khan Younis, November 2023. Credit: Mohammed Dahman / AP

Related Articles

• Israel's war in Gaza has killed over 17,000 children. These are the stories of 28 of them | Sheren Falah Saab
• More and more evidence shows – most of the Gaza war deaths are civilians | Nir Hasson
• Gaza Health Ministry says 226 killed since cease-fire began; hundreds of bodies recovered | Jack Khoury

However, Israel has not refuted the data with contradictory information, and several studies have even raised the possibility that the death toll in Gaza is even higher than the Health Ministry reports. In June 2025, a study was released  concluding that, as of January of that year, some 75,200 Gazans had died a violent death during the war, contradicting the Health Ministry's count of around 55,000 dead. At the time, more and more international experts concluded that the Health Ministry's data is reliable, and may even be very conservative.