Hamas Says Gaza Death Toll Hits 20,000—What We Know

As Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement continue to fight their deadliest-ever war in the Gaza Strip, the exact number of those killed, especially among civilians, has been the subject of fierce debate amid rival claims regarding the mounting toll.

Newsweek spoke with officials of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as they provided figures for the first time, and Hamas, which offered the highest yet number of more than 20,000 dead.

Newsweek reported Monday that Israeli officials estimate that the IDF had killed 5,000 combatants and 10,000 civilians since the current conflict began with an unprecedented Hamas-led October 7 surprise attack on Israel that Israeli officials say killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in Israel. The IDF figures shared with Newsweek were also reported on by the Agence France-Presse.

Responding to this 1-to-2 ratio of combatants to non-combatants killed in Gaza, IDF spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus told reporters later that night that he could not confirm the figure, though he acknowledged "there are numbers out there that have been accredited to various security officials speaking about approximately 5,000 enemy combatants killed, so that is the only thing that I can reiterate."

An IDF spokesperson told Newsweek on Tuesday that Conricus could confirm "his knowledge the report" but not its content.

As for officials in Hamas-led Gaza, Palestinian Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra estimated 15,899 killed in his latest assessment issued Monday. The same day, Hamas spokesperson Bassim Naim said the number killed in Gaza has reached around "20,000, including over 6,150 children and over 4,000 women," while "approximately 6,500 remain missing, either under the rubble or with an unknown fate, among them more than 4,700 children and women."

On Tuesday, a Hamas spokesperson told Newsweek that "there are more than 20,000 civilians killed." The spokesperson said that "most of the dead are innocent civilians, children and women" and that Israeli officials continued to spread "false and baseless allegations" and "exaggerate" their claims.

"It has absolutely been proven more than once that this number does not correspond to the truth," the Hamas spokesperson said.

Hamas has yet to release any information regarding the number of dead among its ranks or those of other armed Palestinian factions in Gaza. The IDF estimated that just over 400 of its personnel had been killed, most of them in the initial assault, with at least 72 killed since Israeli forces launched a ground offensive in late October.

Throughout the conflict, the IDF has repeatedly cast skepticism on casualty estimates provided by officials in Gaza, which Hamas has controlled since 2007, and Israeli officials have further accused the group of deliberately embedding its fighters in civilian areas and using human shields.

In responding to Newsweek's question regarding concerns over civilian casualties during his talk with reporters on Monday, Conricus emphasized that such alleged practices by Hamas constituted "the number one reason civilians are getting killed, it's not our practice."

"It's the fact that they're co-located and Hamas isn't deployed in the Al-Mawasi area or the agricultural areas surrounding Khan Younis or between northern and central Gaza, where there's open territory and olive orchards, etc.," he said.

"No, they have intentionally placed themselves under civilians. And since that's where the enemy is, that is where we will have to go in order to defeat the enemy."

Hamas has repeatedly rejected such accusations and on Monday alleged that "the relentless massacres perpetrated by the Zionist occupation forces throughout the Gaza Strip, coupled with their targeted bombing of medical facilities, notably witnessed in the recent attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, constitute a deliberate strategy aimed at facilitating the coerced displacement of our people from their land."

Conricus also defended the reported 1-to-2 ratio of fighters to civilians killed, without confirming it, saying that "it would be a phenomenally better ratio than any other military fighting in densely populated urban terrain in the last 30 years around the world, all of the Western militaries included."

"Many times, the ratio of combatant versus non-combatant is 1-to-9 or 1-to-10, one combatant for every nine civilians killed," Conricus said. "That's the sad reality, not in Israeli conflicts."

The remarks came as international concerns continued to mount regarding the growing death toll, especially as Israeli forces expanded their campaign to Gaza's south, where more than a million Palestinians were called to evacuate in the leadup to the ground offensive.

Senior officials of President Joe Biden's administration issued strong remarks regarding civilian casualties over the weekend while maintaining support for Israel's overall efforts to deliver a decisive defeat against Hamas.

Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking Saturday at the sidelines of the COP28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates, said, "Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed," and, "We believe Israel has to do more to protect innocent civilians."

The same day, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned during the Reagan National Defense Forum in California that civilian casualties drive Palestinians "into the arms of the enemy" and would "replace tactical victory with a strategic defeat."

Addressing these remarks during a press briefing on Monday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that it is not "a secret that we think that too many Palestinians were killed in the opening weeks of this conflict."

"We want to see Israel take additional steps to minimize civilian harm," Miller said. "We talked to them about that when we were in Israel last week. They briefed us on their plans. And if you go through their plans about how they intend to minimize civilian harm, you have to step back and remember that the Israeli military is one of the most professional militaries in the world.

"They have legal determinations that they make when conducting strikes. They go through procedures where they weigh civilian harm when they conduct any of these strikes. They have put in place these plans I mentioned a moment ago to evacuate specific neighborhoods to keep civilians out harm's way rather than just telling an entire population to move."

He reiterated that Israeli forces "are going about this with a certain degree of deliberateness to try to minimize civilian harm, but it's not just the intent that matters, it's the results."

Biden had earlier cast doubts on official casualty figures provided by the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, saying at an October 25 press conference that he had "no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed."

After a closed-door meeting the following day with Muslim American leaders, reports emerged in The Washington Post and ABC News that the president apologized for his remarks.

Other U.S. officials have previously suggested that the true number of civilian casualties may be even greater than what has been made public. During her testimony to Congress on November 8, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf said that U.S. officials believed the rate of civilian casualties was "very high, frankly, and it could be that they are even higher than are being cited."

Newsweek reached out to the U.S. State Department for comment.

Update 12/5/23, 10:40 a.m. ET: This story was updated with additional information and new headline.