A brand new study by the British medical journal, the Lancet, has estimated that the actual death toll of Palestinians in Gaza who were killed as a result of Israel’s genocidal war could exceed 186,000 with calculations of indirect deaths.
The death toll of Palestinian people killed since Israel’s war on Gaza on October 7 has reached 38,153, according to the Gaza’s health ministry.
The study published on Friday revealed that this figure is likely a dramatic underestimate and does not account for the thousands of people buried under the rubble or for the mounting “indirect” deaths as a result of Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s food distribution, healthcare and sanitation systems.
According to UN, the study estimated that the number of bodies still buried in the rubble is likely to exceed 10,000, as 35 percent of Gaza’ buildings have been destroyed.
“The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population’s inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organizations still active in the Gaza Strip,” the report said.
Citing the transparency watchdog Airwars, which conducts detailed investigations of incidents of civilian harm in areas of conflict, the names of identifiable victims are often omitted from the ministry’s fatalities lists.
The destruction of much of the strip’s infrastructure has hindered the collection of data for the ministry of health.
“This change has inevitably degraded the detailed data recorded previously,” the study said.
The study also added that the ministry now reports separately the number of unidentified bodies among the total death toll.
Urging for an immediate ceasefire and fair distribution to the humanitarian aid in the strip, the report called for the need to accurately record “the scale and nature of suffering” in Gaza as well as ensure the historical accountability and acknowledge the full cost of the war, deeming it legal requirement.
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