10:31 p.m. ET, December 5, 2023
An Israeli military spokesman wants to clarify his comments about civilian casualties in Gaza
By CNN’s Richard Allen Greene in Tel Aviv. The Israel Defense Forces spokesman, who told CNN on Monday that the killing of two Palestinian civilians per Hamas fighter in Gaza would be a “tremendously positive ratio,” said on Tuesday that the IDF had not confirmed that those figures were correct.
Jonathan Conricus, the spokesman, said he only meant to say he had seen a news report attributing those numbers to an unnamed Israeli official. “I confirmed that I saw the report. I haven’t confirmed the numbers yet,” he told CNN.
The AFP news agency reported on Monday, citing a briefing by senior Israeli military officials to foreign media, that the Israeli military estimated that two civilians were killed in Gaza for every Hamas fighter.
AFP reported that when asked to confirm reports that some 5,000 Hamas fighters had been killed, the Israeli military official replied: “The numbers are more or less correct.”
According to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza, nearly 16,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7.
Conricus said the IDF wanted to obtain accurate figures on civilians and combatants killed, adding that he expected that figure to be known before the end of the war.
And he said the Israeli military speaks of active combatants when it counts how many Hamas fighters it has killed: “Our definition is combatants, people who are fighting,” he said.
He repeated Israel’s regular assertion that the IDF aimed to kill “as few civilians as possible” and accused Hamas of using people as human shields.
He reiterated that the ratio of two civilians killed per combatant was better than in urban fighting in places like Raqqa and Deir Ezzor in Syria, but added: “Any loss of life is sad, I should have chosen my words more carefully.”