According to the study conducted by researchers from, among others, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Yale University, the death toll in Gaza could be over 64,000 – of which 59 percent are women, children and the elderly.
The analysis applies to the first nine months of the war, from October 2023 to June 2024. According to the Gaza Health Authority, Lancet reported just over 37,000 killed during the same period.
The study’s calculations are based on lists from hospitals and morgues. The researchers have also used posts about dead people on social media and collected information from relatives in an online survey.
Based on the name lists and the number of duplicates, the researchers then made an estimate of the mortality of the total population. The method is called “capture–recapture” and has been used in other conflicts, for example in Sudan and Guatemala.
– The figures from the health authority only rely on data from collapsed health systems. But our calculations also include those who are buried in the racial masses, says Zeina Jamaluddine, PhD student in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who is one of the researchers behind the study.
According to SVT’s Middle East correspondent, the study’s results are not surprising.
– The people I talk to in Gaza say that many dead are still in the racial masses and have not been registered, says SVT’s Middle East correspondent Samir Abu Eid.