The Israel-Hamas War: Operation Iron Sword
Casualties

Israeli Casualties

In Israel, the death toll for the massacre on October 7, 2023, was initially believed to exceed 1,400; however, by December 4, it was updated to 1,151, with some people still unaccounted for and the remains of others unidentified. The number included 282 IDF soldiers, 764 civilians, 57 Israel Police officers, and 38 local security officers. The fatalities included two infants, 12 children under the age of 10, 36 youths aged 10-19, and 25 people over the age of 80. Three soldiers who were kidnapped were declared dead on November 28. In addition, Hamas held the bodies of 15 civilians and members of the security forces (see updates on hostages here).

Of the 278 injured, 40 were in serious condition in hospitals, 164 were in moderate condition, and 14 were in good condition.

Approximately 200 foreigners, including those holding dual nationality, were killed. Among them are 46 U.S. citizens, 30 Thais, 30 French, 19 Russian, 18 Ukrainian, 10 British and Nepalis, 9 Argentines, 6 Canadians, and 4 Filipinos and Chinese.

The doctors at the Israeli National Center of Forensic Medicine of the Ministry of Health have worked nonstop to identify the remains of the victims of the October 7 massacre but admit some bodies were so severely mutilated, burned, and brutalized that they may never be identified. As one member of the staff explained:

Israeli archaeologists were called to help collect and identify remains. “As archaeologists, we are trained to identify human remains that others may miss,” Moshe Ajami, the deputy head of Israel’s Antiquities Authority, told the New York Times.

The death toll of soldiers after the ground operation began in Gaza was 405, with 2,570 injured when a ceasefire was declared on January 19, 2025.

Hezbollah killed at least 66 civilians in attacks near the northern border. Two soldiers were killed in a drone attack from Iraq. Hezbollah killed 22 soldiers before the IDF ground operation began on September 30, 2024.

The total number of soldiers, including those killed inside Israel battling terrorists after the invasion, is 831, with 5,617 injured. The IDF acknowledged that 56 soldiers were killed by friendly fire or accidents.

A total of 886 Israeli civilians were fatalities as of November 7, 2024. Of those, 53 were children under the age of 18. Of the 98 hostages held by Hamas on January 8, 2025, 36 were declared dead. More than 14,000 Israelis had been injured. 

One Palestinian was killed in the West Bank by the Iranian missile attack on October 1. 

The media has focused on hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese forced to flee from their homes by the violence. Less attention was paid to the estimated 125,000 Israelis from 64 towns who have been evacuated from their homes in the north and south.

Hamas-run Health Ministry Statistics

The Hamas-run Health Ministry claimed that more than 2,300 civilians, including 724 children and 458 women, were killed in the first week. The Ministry’s figures in past conflicts were inaccurate. They failed to distinguish between terrorists, civilians, and people killed from misfired Hamas rockets. The Ministry did not say a single member of Hamas had been killed, suggesting that the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes somehow managed to miss all their targets.

Luke Baker, who was in charge of coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for Reuters from 2014 until 2017, said Hamas “has squeezed the life out of honesty and probity. Any health official stepping out of line and not giving the death tolls that Hamas wants reported to journalists risks serious consequences.” He added, “Hamas has a clear propaganda incentive to inflate civilian casualties as much as possible.”

Statistical analysis also indicates that “the total civilian casualty count is likely to be extremely overstated,” according to Abraham Wyner, Professor of Statistics and Data Science at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily. We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real. Then they assigned about 70% of the total to be women and children, splitting that amount randomly from day to day. Then they in-filled the number of men as set by the predetermined total.”

A study by Gabriel Epstein of the Washington Institute found that some calculations came from “media reports” and others from the Hamas-run Government Media Office (GMO), which the UN acknowledged was using an unknown methodology. He acknowledged the challenge of accurately reporting casualties:

What can be said for sure, Epstein said, is that “Hamas-produced statistics are inconsistent, imprecise, and appear to have been systematically manipulated to downplay the number of militants killed and to exaggerate the proportion of noncombatants confirmed as dead.”

Haaretz reported about the “unofficial code of silence.” One Gazan told the paper, “There is fear of speaking in public about Hamas members, even ones who were killed, for many reasons.” He explained the reason is the “‘fear of being seen as collaborators’ and a fear of harassment by Hamas.” People are afraid they will be accused of “treason” if they criticize Hamas. 

“‘Hamas releases the names of the organization’s dead’ only in rarest of cases,” he said. ‘The population doesn’t post them, not even the families.”

Hamas also doesn’t want to legitimize bombing in Gaza. They prefer the focus to be entirely on the civilian victims. To communicate the death of a fighter, Hamas may use an Arabic phrase about dying for Allah while advancing. 

On April 6, the Health Ministry released a report that acknowledged “incomplete data” for 11,371 of the 33,091 Palestinian fatalities it claimed to have documented. It also admitted that more than 15,000 records came from unidentified “reliable media sources.” By its admission, then, it appears the number of casualties is significantly lower than the figure it publishes, which means a far higher percentage are combatants and a far smaller percentage are women and children. 

Later, the UN significantly revised the number of women and children killed in Gaza. On May 6, it was reporting 9,500 women and more than 14,500 children had died. Two days later, those numbers were reduced to 4,959 women and 7,797 children. Nevertheless, they continued to report the same total number of casualties. 

Israel acknowledged the deaths of at least 16,000 civilians but also noted as the Rafah operation continued that some 17,000 terrorists had been killed. The IDF said it killed more than 1,000 terrorists in a later operation in Jabalia. The Henry Jackson Society report said Israeli sources were cited in only 5% of the media stories in its analysis.

Before the data revision, President Joe Biden said he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using” and “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.” He later backtracked to appease Arab American and Muslim critics.

On June 27, 2024, the House of Representatives passed an amendment to the annual U.S. State Department appropriations bill that would bar the department from citing casualty figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry.

On November 8, 2024, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and media released an “update report” containing misleading statistics on Gaza fatalities. While headlines claim that 70% of Gaza’s war fatalities are women and children, this figure applies only to a subset of 8,119 “verified” deaths out of a reported total of 43,000. The OHCHR’s verification method, focusing on incidents in residential buildings and requiring multiple independent sources, skews data toward mass-casualty events and likely omits deaths from direct combat or precise, low-casualty strikes. Additionally, the report’s acknowledgment that some fatalities may result from errant Palestinian rockets reflects a lack of conclusive evidence on the causes of death. Such selective data interpretation, particularly in conflicts involving Israel, fails to meet standard professional rigor. 

An analysis by the Henry Jackson Society published in December 2024 concluded: “The fatality figures released by Gaza’s Ministry of Health are riddled with statistical anomalies and methodological flaws. Men have been repeatedly misclassified as women, adults have been recorded as children, and deaths unrelated to Israel Defense Forces action – such as natural deaths or fatalities from misfired rockets – have been included. These errors systematically inflate the civilian death toll and obscure the distinction between combatants and non-combatants.”

Researchers for the Society found, for example, that some “5,000 natural deaths, which would have happened even without the conflict, appear to have been added to the list of casualties, including cancer patients who later appeared on lists of those still receiving hospital treatment.”

Still, the media continued to report the unverified claims of the Hamas ministry and the UN, which said 46,645 Palestinians had been killed and 110,012 wounded between October 7, 2023, and January 14, 2025 (five days before the ceasefire). The Society report found that “Of the 1,378 articles reviewed in the report, a staggering 98% cited fatality figures from Hamas-controlled sources without critical scrutiny.”

“It’s been maddening from my angle that anyone could think there could be a number for the dead in a war anytime in human history down to a single digit on a daily basis—it fails common sense—and be run by mass media of the world as fact,” observed John Spencer, West Point’s urban warfare expert.

The numbers generated by Hamas are certainly inaccurate, but thousands of casualties were indeed civilians. General Sir John McColl, who was one of the military experts from six NATO countries that visited Israel and Gaza, explained that Israel was fighting in “the most complex and demanding operational environment any of us had come across, including in Afghanistan and Iraq.” He acknowledged the number of casualties was significant but explained, “The alternative is to clear the buildings by hand with the inevitable loss of life that would entail, especially as Hamas terrorists wait for IDF entry to set off lethal booby traps via remote detonators.”

Deaths of Terrorists

Israel estimates that some 18,000 fighters have been killed (Hamas admitted on February 15 that 6,000 were dead). “If that number proves to be even reasonably accurate,” Wyner said, “then the ratio of noncombatant casualties to combatants is remarkably low: at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1. By historical standards of urban warfare, where combatants are embedded above and below into civilian population centers, this is a remarkable and successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians.”

Similarly, John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, observed that:

Israel has not compiled an official tally of the enemy killed but estimates that 50% of Hamas’s forces were killed, wounded, or arrested. Six brigade commanders, over 20 battalion commanders, and some 150 company commanders were eliminated. The IDF has published the names of some of the commanders it eliminated. They include:

• Marwan Issa, the number three in the Hamas high command and deputy to military chief Mohammed Deif.
• Ali Qadi, the leader of the Nakba Force responsible for the massacre on October 7.
• Merad Abu Merad, the head of the Hamas aerial system, was also responsible for the invasion.
• Asma-al-Mazini, the head of Hamas’s Shura Council and a minister responsible for Hamas prisoners in Israeli jails.
• Ayman Nofal, the commander of Hamas’s Central Gaza Brigade and a member of its General Military Council.
• Mohsen Abu Zina, the head of weapons and industries.
• Wael Asefa, commander of the Deir al-Batah battalion.
• Ahmed Ghandour, commander of the northern Gaza brigade, was involved in the abduction of Gilad Shalit in 2006.
• Ayman Siam, head of Hamas’s rocket firing array.
• Jihad Makhasin, Commander of National Security in Gaza.
• Jawad Abu Shamala, Minister of Economy.
• Muhammad Abu Hasna, a commander in Hamas’s operations unit.
• Muhammad Salah, a senior Hamas operative responsible for weapons development.
• Rafa Salama, commander and deputy to Mohammed Deif.
• Mohammed Deif, number two in Hamas and the most wanted terrorist.
• Abed Al-Zeriei, an operative in the Manufacturing Department.
•  Osama Gadallah, commander in Palestine Islamic Jihad’s military intelligence unit.

The Biden administration repeatedly expressed concern about civilian casualties and hectored Israel to take greater precautions to avoid them. Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted on creating a channel for discussing U.S. concerns and getting answers to questions about targets and incidents where civilians were hurt or killed.

The Northern Front

The war with Hezbollah began after the Hamas massacre on October 7, when it began bombarding Israeli towns in the north. As in Gaza, Hezbollah has embedded its fighters and arsenal in civilian homes and neighborhoods to use them as human shields. Hence, when Israel began its operation in the north with hundreds of airstrikes, it was expected that some civilians would be casualties. The same was true in the case of some of the assassinations where the terrorists were in residential buildings or areas. 

The action that kicked off the more intense stage of the war occurred on September 17, 2024, with the explosion of pagers and walkie-talkies given to Hezbollah terrorists for communication. Explosives believed planted by Israel primarily killed at least 12 terrorists and maimed many more. Because the charges were small and either held by a terrorist or in their pocket or belt, few of the estimated 3,000 people who were wounded were civilians. A Hezbollah official later said 1,500 terrorists were too injured to fight.

When Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes in the following days in what it called Operation Northern Arrow, the number of casualties quickly grew. The Lebanese Health Ministry said 3,189 people were killed, and 14,078 were wounded. As in the case of the Gaza figures, no distinction was made between terrorist fatalities and civilians. Also, as in Gaza, the IDF warned civilians to evacuate areas it planned to attack.

Hezbollah acknowledged the death of at least 512 of its fighters before it stopped acknowledging its losses. Another 79 terrorists from other groups and at least one Lebanese soldier were killed as of September 23, 2024. Hezbollah subsequently stopped revealing its dead. The IDF said it killed more than 3,500 terrorists.

Israel also killed several Hezbollah commanders in targeted strikes. On April 16, for example, Ismail Yousef Baz, the commander of Hezbollah’s coastal district, and Muhammad Hussein Mustafa Shehoury, the commander of one of the Radwan Force’s rocket and missile units, were killed. On May 14, a senior field commander, Hussain Ibrahim, was eliminated. On July 30, 2024, Israel killed Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s most senior military commander and a right-hand man to Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, in an airstrike in Beirut. On September 20, Ibrahim Aqil, commander of the Radwan Force, and at least ten commanders were killed while meeting to plan an October 7-type attack.

Meanwhile, UNIFIL, which failed in its peacekeeping mission, refused Israel’s request that it move north to avoid the fighting and allow Israel to complete clearing villages along the border of Hezbollah fighters. 

“There is an obligation on Israel and Hezbollah to respect the role of UN peacekeepers and their mandate, and do nothing that would put peacekeepers and our troops in particular in harm’s way," said Irish President Michael Higgins. UNIFIL has 347 soldiers deployed among the force’s total of 10,000.

Table of Contents for Israel-Hamas War
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