More than 100,000 Palestinians have likely been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, according to a research team from the Germany-based Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR).
A study conducted by the MPIDR and the Centre for Demographic Studies estimates that from October 7, 2023, to December 31, 2024, 78,318 people were killed by violence in Gaza, a significantly higher number than what Gaza’s Health Ministry was reporting at the time.
“An update of their analysis, produced after the publication of the study, revealed that the current violent death toll likely exceeds 100,000,” the Max Planck Society said in an article on the study.
The research aligns with two other studies on the Gaza death toll, which have found the real number of violent deaths is likely around 40% higher than what the Gaza Health Ministry has reported. The latest update from the Health Ministry said its death toll has reached 69,775.
The studies deal only with violent deaths, not indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege and destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure.
“Our estimates of the impact of war on life expectancy in Gaza and Palestine are significant, but probably represent only a lower limit of the actual mortality burden. Our analysis focuses exclusively on direct, conflict-related deaths. The indirect effects of war, which are often greater and more long-lasting, are not quantified in our considerations,” said Ana C. Gómez-Ugarte, a researcher for MPIDR who was involved in the study.
The MPIDR study found that life expectancy in Gaza in 2024 dropped to nearly half the level it was before October 7, 2023. “As a result of this unprecedented mortality, life expectancy in Gaza fell by 44% in 2023 and by 47% in 2024 compared with what it would have been without the war—equivalent to losses of 34.4 and 36.4 years, respectively,” said Gómez-Ugarte.
The researchers also found that the “age and gender distribution of violent deaths in Gaza between October 7, 2023, and December 31, 2024, closely resembled the demographic patterns observed in several genocides documented by the United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME).”
The study used a statistical method that accounts for uncertainties caused by limited data availability and draws on data from several public sources, including Gaza’s Health Ministry, the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, and UN agencies.