World
IDF official says 71 000 killed in Gaza war, matching Gaza Health Ministry estimate
JTA – A senior Israel Defence Forces (IDF) official told Israeli media outlets on Thursday, 29 January, that the military estimates a death toll in Gaza of approximately 71 000, the same number that the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry announced this week.
In the past, Israeli officials have sometimes disputed Gaza Health Ministry data, accusing the ministry of inflating death tolls. Though Israeli officials haven’t officially disputed the overall Gaza war figures for some time, they frequently contested the toll in specific incidents, and some pro-Israel advocates have continued to challenge estimates of the death toll in Gaza as Hamas propaganda.
Now, the senior official’s disclosure underscores that there is no gap in the total number of deaths estimated by both parties to the two-year war in Gaza.
The official reportedly said the IDF was still working to determine the breakdown between combatants and civilians in the total, as well as how many died directly from military action. The Gaza Health Ministry’s toll doesn’t distinguish between militants and civilians.
The official’s remarks on Thursday were briefed to Israeli outlets on condition of anonymity. By Thursday evening, an IDF official told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the reports didn’t reflect an official disclosure by the army.
“The IDF clarifies that the details published don’t reflect official IDF data,” the IDF official said. “Any publication or report on this matter will be released through official and orderly channels.”
Israel hasn’t published its own data on the death toll in Gaza to refute the ministry’s, but has maintained that it has killed roughly two to three civilians for every militant.
The Gaza Health Ministry says 71 667 Gazans died between 7 October 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel from the enclave, and today, including more than 450 killed since the United States brokered ceasefire went into effect in October 2025. It also claims that at least 440 Palestinians have died of malnutrition and starvation, a figure that Israel denies.
Human rights nongovernmental organisations and the United Nations have long said the ministry’s data is reliable. Some estimates by pro-Palestinian sources have suggested an even higher toll.
About two million Palestinians lived in Gaza at the outset of the war. The 71 000 figure means that about 3% of Gaza’s population was killed during the war.
Dr John H Abeles
January 30, 2026 at 1:54 pm
But, even if true, at least 25,000 of those deaths were Hamas and other radical groups militants, and also likely included natural deaths of several thousand a year …
Thus the civilian ratio of about 2:1 falls well within the normal ratio of civilian deaths in other spheres of urban warfare anywhere
There was no genocide in Gaza
Stephanie Kronson
February 2, 2026 at 11:59 am
The forensic obsession with the death toll in Gaza is itself yet more evidence of the selective outrage and moral relativism that is characteristic of a form of antisemitism that holds Jews to a uniquely high and impossible standard. The CIVILIAN death toll in Yemen by early 2022 – during the Saudi-led intervention against Houthi targets – claimed an estimated 377 thousand CIVILIAN LIVES: 156 thousand as a result of direct combat violence and the rest apparently due to war-related famine and disease. More remarkable is that 177 thousand victims were children under five. A 2019 Save the Children report claimed that c300 babies died a daily in conflict. The combined death toll of 71 thousand in Gaza, over almost three years, is quite frankly remarkably low given the extent to which the Hamas-led terror armies embedded and cocooned civilians in their military infrastructure, deliberately using them human shields as part of their publicly acknowledged death-centred strategy, shooting people trying to escape to safe zone; denying them safety in their underground military city and through friendly fire (35 thousand missiles and rockets fired directly into Israeli civilian centres from 7 fronts over 18 months) – 20-25% of Palestinian rockets fall short, killing their own people (these deaths are not separated out). If at least half or almost half the deaths are combatants- this figure still constitutes the lowest civilian to combatant death toll ratio in asymmetrical urban guerrilla warfare history – with an acknowledged average of 9 civilians to every 1 combatant generally dying in similar conflicts. It was originally reported that the war in Mosul claimed 9 thousand civilian lives. This figures was quietly adjusted upwards to more than 40 thousand as per Iraqi intelligence (apparently it was too hard to tell in the fog of war) – a much shorter but nonetheless brutal war against radical Islamists. People who can barely point to Israel on a map and said nothing about the 900 thousand plus deaths in US-led wars on terror hotspots – wars that claimed 4.5- 6 million including by war related starvation and displaced more than 38 million people – is just more evidence of the double standard against Jews and the feverish desire – especially among so-called Liberals (different from true libertarians) to scapegoat the Jews and now our homeland. I am forever puzzled by Jews who join these mobs. Is it fear or ignorance that fuels their recriminations and perhaps underpins the tone of this article? Unless I have misunderstood, like so many other outlets, is lacks vital context and important observations by independent military experts. What a shame.