The Gaza health authorities, under the control of Hamas, increased this Sunday the death toll from Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since October 7 last year to 25,105. Five out of ten deaths are minors, three out of ten are women and two out of ten are men aged 18 and over. In addition, there have been 62,681 wounded since the bombing began.
The figure suggests that more than one in 100 Gazans died in the 105 days of conflict. This amount, just over 1% of the population, would correspond to about 70,000 people in a city like Madrid.
It is difficult to find similar numbers in other recent conflicts. The available data, compiled by the United Nations as part of the Cost of War academic project, suggests that more people die per day than in Iraq (even in the worst month of fighting in that country), Syria or in the first month of the war in Ukraine.
These conflicts lasted longer (the first invasion of Iraq took eight years) and resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. The case in Gaza is still in its early stages and there are no signs of it ending in the near future.
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This rhythm means that the death toll in Gaza reaches 10,000 after just the first month of attacks. In Ukraine, it took a year and a half to reach this number (including civilians only). The following graphic shows how deaths in each conflict developed up to the third month of the war.
These figures can be partly explained by the fact that the scale of the Israeli attack is unprecedented. Never before have there been as many bombings with civilian casualties in the conflicts in the Middle East as in October and November in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank: 1,614, almost all of them in the Gaza Strip, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED, for its acronym in English).
Israel appears to be applying the so-called Dahiya doctrine. It is named after a Hezbollah militia stronghold in southern Beirut that Israel intensively bombed after the kidnapping of two of its soldiers that sparked the 2006 war. Gadi Eizenkot, then chief of staff and now a member of Krieg's cabinet, declared it two years later as “the use of disproportionate force and the infliction of immense damage and destruction” by designating any location from which shots are fired at Israel as ” military bases”. In the background is the idea that this harsh strategy will encourage the population to rebel against Hamas.
A direct result of these bombings is the destruction in the Gaza Strip. About half of Gaza's buildings have been damaged or destroyed, a figure that rises to 72 to 84 percent in the north of the Palestinian enclave, according to an analysis based on images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite.
Even in previous conflicts between Gaza and Israel there were not as many attacks and deaths. The numbers recorded this year increase tenfold the highest values of previous years. Since reliable data became available (2008), there have been more than 2,000 deaths in Gaza and the West Bank in 2014 alone (in the course of one year).
Early in the war, military spokesman Daniel Hagari admitted that the “emphasis” in bombing raids was on damage, not precision. U.S. intelligence estimates that about half of the munitions Israel has dropped from the air are unguided.
Another difference from previous conflicts is the use of artificial intelligence. Former Chief of Staff Aviv Kojavi pointed out last year that the new data system was generating 100 potential targets daily, compared to 50 per year previously.
No safe zones
Among those killed in Gaza, there is no way to distinguish between Hamas militants and civilians, but their death toll has been compared and confirmed in several international academic studies (such as this one from The Lancet). What is also striking is the very high proportion of women and children who are unlikely to be militia members who were struck by the Israeli attack.
The numbers can be partly explained by the population structure of Gaza, where every second person is a minor: it is unfortunately logical that in an indiscriminate bombing, every second person who dies would be a child.
Israel's attacks were also not just focused on the north of the Gaza Strip, where the army initially said it wanted to eliminate Hamas's presence. 25% of the casualties occurred in Rafah and Khan Younis, two towns south of the Wadi Gaza River where Israeli forces urged civilians to seek refuge in the first month of the war.
Gaza authorities, who publish a list of the names, surnames and IDs of those who died, also estimate that around 7,000 people are under the rubble. The situation also does not allow us to ignore the deaths due to lack of medical care (more than 62,000 injuries have been recorded), starvation (most strive for one meal a day) or illnesses caused by sleeping in tents in the coldest months. to estimate.
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