A joint investigation by the British newspaper The Guardian, the magazine +972, and the Hebrew website Local Call revealed that secret Israeli military intelligence data shows that 83 percent of Palestinian casualties in Gaza were civilians.
The investigative report stated that, according to a secret database belonging to Israeli military intelligence, five out of every six Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza were civilians, a very high death rate rarely recorded in recent decades of warfare.
According to the database, Israeli intelligence had identified, as of May 2025, the deaths or “high probability” of deaths of 8,900 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters after 19 months of war.
In contrast, the Ministry of Health in Gaza announced a total of 53,000 deaths during the same period, indicating that only 17 percent of the victims were combatants, while civilians constituted 83 percent—5 out of every six killed.
