A study based on household surveys suggests that from October 2023 to January 2025, around 75,000 people in Gaza died violent deaths, while Gaza’s health ministry estimates 46,000 for the same period
By Michael Le Page
25 June 2025
Destroyed buildings in Jabalia, Gaza, in February 2025
Imago/Alamy
Around 75,000 people in the Gaza Strip – 3.6 per cent of the population – died from violent causes between 7 October 2023 and 5 January 2025, according to an independent study based on a household survey. That is higher than the estimate of 46,000 violent deaths during this period by Gaza’s health ministry.
The study also estimates that there were nearly 9000 more non-violent deaths during this period than would normally be expected in the Gaza Strip. This is the first ever estimate of the indirect deaths due to the war in the region that began in October 2023.
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The study is based on interviews with 2000 randomly selected households, with people asked to list all members of the household before the war and then the current situation. “We actually were in the field, and we collected data straight from the population,” says Debarati Guha-Sapir at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.
While the team was unable to access some areas due to ongoing fighting and Israeli evacuation orders, this gap would likely lead to underestimation rather than overestimation, the researchers think.
Guha-Sapir says Gaza’s health ministry has stringent criteria for counting deaths. For instance, it does not count deaths where no bodies have been found, such as people who have been buried in tunnels. So she thinks her team’s estimate is closer to the true number.