JAKARTA - The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) believes that the number of deaths reported by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health as a result of the war in the Gaza Strip is largely accurate, a senior Israeli military official admitted on Thursday.
In an anonymous press conference, the official said the IDF believed the number of Gaza deaths from the war that lasted more than two years, sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack, was around 70,000.
Meanwhile, the number of deaths reported by the Gaza Health Ministry is currently 71,667, including more than 450 people who have died since the October 2021 ceasefire.
Senior military officials said the actual details of the number of casualties in Gaza were still under review, and it was not yet known exactly how many of the dead were members of terrorist groups and how many people died directly as a result of the fighting.
Israel largely rejects the death toll claimed by the Hamas health ministry during the war, particularly after certain incidents in which the group announced what Israeli officials called "exaggerated casualty figures."
According to the military official, the number of fatalities does not include the bodies believed to be buried under the rubble in Gaza, which Hamas estimates to number around 10,000.
The Gaza Ministry also claimed that at least 440 Palestinians died of malnutrition and starvation in the Gaza Strip during the war. Israel denied this, with military officials claiming that these statistics were manipulated by Hamas to include individuals with underlying serious health problems.
The Gaza health ministry's records include the names and identities of more than 90 percent of the bodies found. They do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Israel has never disputed Hamas health ministry data with its own precise figures, but has periodically offered a rough ratio between civilians and combatants killed, insisting that the ratio is much lower than in other urban warfare conflicts.
However, during previous wars, Israeli security agencies found the total number of deaths reported by the Hamas-run health ministry to be reliable.
Before the October 2025 ceasefire, the IDF said it had killed at least 22,000 combatants, as well as 1,600 other terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
IDF officials have also previously said that the ratio of combat deaths to civilians remains relatively the same throughout the war, with two to three civilians killed for every terrorist killed.
Israel says it is trying to minimize civilian casualties and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
