After more than two years of bombarding Gaza, Israel’s military appears to have accepted the death toll in the enclave that the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza has been compiling, painstakingly and against the odds.Since the start of its genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, Israel has repeatedly dismissed, denied or downplayed the scale of death and devastation in the territory documented by journalists, Palestinians and Gaza’s authorities. It has at times issued its own statistics on people killed, then changed them, while accusing Palestinians and Gaza officials of exaggerating the death toll, especially of civilians.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listBut on Thursday, an Israeli army official told journalists in the country that the army accepted that about 70,000 people had been killed in Gaza during the war.The Gaza Health Ministry estimates that as of January 27 this year, at least 71,662 people have been killed since the start of the war on October 7, 2023. Of those, 488 people have been killed since the declaration of a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip on October 10, 2025.Thousands more are missing and believed to be buried under rubble. According to the National Committee for Missing Persons, that figure could exceed 10,000. Meanwhile, the Health Ministry has said that at least 440 people died of starvation during the war.The senior Israeli military official did not acknowledge that a vast majority of those killed in Gaza are civilians – most are children and women – or that hundreds have starved to death and that thousands more are buried under rubble in Gaza. Advertisement Still, the acceptance of the Gaza Health Ministry’ …
