Gaza Death Toll: How Many Palestinians Has Israel's Campaign Killed

TEMPO.CO, Geneva - Palestinian health authorities say Israel's ground and air campaign in Gaza has killed more than 38,000 people, mostly civilians, and driven most of the enclave's 2.3 million people from their homes.

The attack began on Oct. 7 when Hamas stormed across the border into Israeli communities. Israel says the militants killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and dragged 253 into captivity in Gaza.

This explainer examines how the Palestinian death toll is calculated, how reliable it is, the breakdown of civilians and fighters killed, and what each side says.

HOW DO GAZA HEALTH AUTHORITIES CALCULATE THE DEATH TOLL?

In the first months of the war, death tolls were calculated entirely by counting bodies that arrived in hospitals and data included names and identity numbers for most of those killed.

As the conflict ground on, and fewer hospitals and morgues continued to operate, the authorities adopted other methods too.

From early May, the Health Ministry updated its breakdown of total fatalities to include unidentified bodies which account for nearly a third of the overall toll. Omar Hussein Ali, head of the ministry's emergency operations center in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said these were bodies that had arrived at hospitals or medical centers

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