Hamas’ death toll figures are a sham – and now we have proof

For many observers, that conclusion is unacceptable. The preferred story is one in which Israel is the brutal aggressor and Gazans are oppressed victims, so Hamas’s casualty numbers are accepted with barely a question. But the evidence that Hamas has systematically inflated Gaza’s death toll has been hiding in plain sight. The first red flag came on October 17, 2023, when Hamas claimed that an Israeli airstrike killed 471 people at Al-Ahli Hospital.

Within days, it became clear that the blast was caused by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket and that the actual casualties were far lower. Yet the inflated figure remained in Hamas’ official tally. In the weeks that followed, Hamas’s daily updates often included internal contradictions, listing at times more women and children among the dead than total fatalities. These fabrications underpinned the widely repeated claim that 70 per cent of those killed in Gaza were women and children.

But in April 2024, Hamas itself released a list of about 24,700 identified fatalities, which showed that the proportion of women and children was a little over 50 per cent. The 70 per cent figure was, of course, never officially corrected.

Over the next few months, Hamas issued additional lists of fatalities, each time seemingly correcting significant errors found in earlier lists, such as missing or invalid IDs.

A study published in The Lancet in February used a Hamas’ June 30 list as the basis for a statistical analysis that claimed the true fatality count in Gaza was more than 60,000. But nearly 900 supposedly confirmed fatalities from that list have since been removed from its most recent report issued on March 24. A close review of Hamas’ August and October 2024 lists shows even more “missing deaths” with 3,400 confirmed and identified fatalities listed in those reports removed from the March update, including more than 1,000 children. These earlier deaths, which the Hamas-run Ministry of Health had claimed were confirmed with actual bodies identified, now never seem to have happened. In response to questions about the removed names, Zaher Al Wahidi, an official with the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, admitted that many of the deaths removed “died from a natural death”. The inclusion of natural deaths, whether deliberate or not, contradicted an iron-clad claim regarding all prior fatality lists – that they listed only war-related deaths. It turns out the lists all along may have included natural deaths, which according to historical precedent may be as high as 8,000 since October 7.​ So, why did Hamas quietly delete thousands of previously reported fatalities?

It’s possible that Hamas inserted real ID numbers of living individuals into earlier lists to lend them credibility and to pump up numbers, only to remove them once they had served their purpose. It is aware that their headline numbers make the front pages in the media while the careful vetting by data analysts is usually relegated to the back pages. One fact, however, is undeniable: Hamas has never acknowledged the death of a single combatant in any of its fatality lists, nor has it revealed the cause of death for any individual. Yet the world continues to treat these statistics as reliable. Meanwhile, statements from the IDF that 20,000 combatants have been killed receive little attention, granting more credibility to a terrorist group than to a democratic ally of the United States and many EU nations.

It should be noted that this is not the first time Hamas presented the vast majority of fatalities as civilians and hid combatant deaths. During Operation Cast Lead in 2009, Hamas claimed about 1,300 fatalities but only 49 of them combatants; months later it admitted 600 to 700 were in fact combatants, corroborating IDF claims.

Despite Hamas’ manipulation of fatality counts, its latest list still reveals a deeper truth: the IDF’s operations in Gaza have overwhelmingly targeted fighting-age males – a category that, for Hamas, includes teenagers.

A breakdown of fatalities reported by Hamas shows a sharp spike in the age range where combatants would be expected, with 72 per cent of deaths among individuals aged 13 to 55 being male (deaths under age 13 are close to 50/50). The number of excess males in this age group is approximately 15,000. And Hamas is likely concealing thousands of additional combatant deaths not disclosed on any list, some of whom may be buried in collapsed tunnels.

The nearly 3:1 ratio of men versus women in this age range killed, despite a similar share of the population, proves that Israel’s military action in Gaza is anything but indiscriminate. For months, Hamas’ fatality figures have shaped the global narrative of the war in Gaza, despite widespread acknowledgement that they are a brutal terrorist organisation that cares little for the people of Gaza. But when their own data cracks under examination again and again, the reflexive trust placed in those numbers must be reconsidered. If Hamas’ numbers cannot hold up to scrutiny, they should not shape how the world understands this war.

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​Salo Aizenberg is a board member of Honest Reporting