Palestinian health authorities say that Israel’s two-year-old ground and air campaign on the Gaza Strip has so far killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, nearly a third of whom are under the age of 18.
The war erupted following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and has focused on Gaza City since last month. The offensive has continued despite talks on US President Donald Trump’s new 20-point plan to end the conflict. The latest detailed statistics released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health on October 7 revealed the deaths of 20,179 children, representing 30 percent of the total of 67,173 killed.
Data from B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, indicates that the official death toll announced by the ministry is significantly higher than that reported in all previous rounds of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza since 2005.
In the early months of the war, the death toll was entirely calculated by counting the bodies arriving at hospitals. The data included the names and ID numbers of most of those killed.
Beginning in early May 2024, the Ministry of Health updated its death toll data to include unidentified bodies, which represent about a third of the total number of deaths. However, since October 2024, the toll has included only those bodies that could be identified. A Reuters examination of a previous list issued by the Gaza Health Ministry showing the death toll showed that more than 1,200 families had all their members killed, one of which had 14 members.
