One Name,Two Lists
Matching open source evidence with official Gaza death tolls
How reliable are the death tolls from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza? It has been one of the enduring questions of the war, with the MoH producing the widely used figure of more than 38,000 Palestinians killed to date.
Israeli officials have repeatedly disputed the civilian toll - highlighting the MoH’s Hamas connections and publicly claiming its numbers are false. US President Joe Biden also initially said he had “no confidence” in the death tolls. In response, the ministry has periodically released lists of names and IDs of Palestinians killed.
In the largest and most in-depth public analysis of the MoH data yet, Airwars used open source monitoring to independently identify nearly 3,000 full names of civilian victims killed in the first 17 days of the war. Every name is listed below, linked to individual reports detailing where and how they died. Where possible the reports include personal stories of lives lost.
By comparing those victims' names with the first list produced by the MoH, this investigation found a high correlation between the official MoH data and what Palestinian civilians reported online - with 75% of publicly reported names also appearing on the MoH list.
This painstaking research provides strong validation for both the first Ministry of Health list of the dead and the reliability of social media posts from PalestiniansMike Spagat
The research only relates to the initial weeks of the war - and evidence suggests the MoH figures have become less accurate as Gaza's health infrastructure has been decimated by the war. Yet it adds to the growing consensus that the MoH figures are broadly reliable, while strengthening trust that Palestinians posting on social media are not exaggerating the civilian toll, said Mike Spagat, a professor specialised in casualty figures at Royal Holloway, University of London and chair of Every Casualty Counts.
“This painstaking research provides strong validation for both the first Ministry of Health list of the dead and the reliability of social media posts from Palestinians collected by Airwars covering the same period,” Spagat said. “Neither list is complete but the 75% matching rate demonstrates convincingly that both capture a large fraction of the underlying reality.”
Read about the methodology of this investigation
How were victims’ names found and matched?
Following the brutal October 7th Hamas attack in Israel that killed more than 1,200 people, Israel began one of the most intense military campaigns in modern history. In the first three weeks alone, the Palestinian MoH recorded nearly 7,000 Palestinians killed.
Responding to criticism of its figures, the MoH has periodically released lists of names and IDs of those victims. The first of these was released on October 26th and detailed nearly 7,000 names and IDs, including gender and age, collated from major hospitals across the Gaza Strip. However, the lists provide no information on where and when the individuals were killed, and whether they are civilians or militants.
Over nine months, Airwars has been gathering incident by incident documentation of civilians publicly reported killed, with more than 300 separate allegations published from between October 7th and 24th - the period covered by the first MoH list. These incidents include nearly 3,000 full names of victims.
The matching process works as follows.
A civilian casualty is identified using publicly available information - typically from social media as well as local news reporting and NGOs. Casualties have also been identified by names written on body bags and lists of victims held up by grieving relatives to news cameras.
Many victims have also been identified by obituaries posted on family Facebook pages.
In instances where the victim’s name is identified, they are cross checked by Airwars researchers against lists produced by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.
Firstly, the surname of the victim is searched in Arabic.
From this selection, the given name and patronymic nameA name derived from a father or male ancestor are then matched to fully reconcile the victim with the MoH list. Age and gender are used as further verification.
In the following list, those that were matched with an MoH identification number are shown with a
Below is a list of 3,259 civilian casualties identified by Airwars between October 7th and 24th in Gaza. Of these, 2,993 had full names and were cross referenced with the MoH list. Airwars matched 2,236 victims to the first MoH list - a total of 74.71%.
Whilst Airwars has been preserving the names of those that have been killed by explosive weapons in Gaza, this list does not claim to be exhaustive - Airwars has yet to process and publish a further 200 incidents from that period. Many deaths are also never publicly reported - open source data allows at-scale documentation, but only captures a partial picture.
This nine-month investigation has found a high correlation between the MoH list and Airwars’ archive of civilian harm drawn from open-source documentation.
The article highlighted a number of challenges that impacted the matching process, including bodies trapped under rubble, discrepancies in victims' legal and honorific names, militants included in the MoH figures, and unreported civilian deaths. Yet it found both that the MoH’s initial casualty recording system was largely reliable and that open testimonies in Gaza are a valuable source in calculating death tolls.
The investigation covered only the period from October 7-24, among the most destructive periods in the history of modern urban warfare. As the war continues, expert analysis suggests that the destruction of Gaza’s medical infrastructure has led to a decline in the reliability of the MoH figures. Since the first list in October, the MoH has published three subsequent lists - the most recent on April 30th 2024. But five of the eight hospitals that were initially providing data on Palestinian fatalities have stopped doing so due to the war.
In a statement to Airwars, the Palestinian Ministry of Health highlighted a number reasons for incomplete data, including “the collapse of the information system during the Israeli occupation army’s attack on Al-Shifa Medical Complex and the destruction of the main data centre, and also the attack on Al-Rantisi Hospital and the destruction of the alternative data centre.” It also said that some days up to 1,000 people had died, making full identification of each body impossible for staff. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to request for comment.
Each name in this list is a life lost to the war in Gaza. The grief faced by families, loved ones, and the Palestinian diaspora across the globe is immeasurable. But by listening to and archiving testimonies of those affected by the conflict, it is possible to make sense of the scale of civilian suffering.
This investigation was only possible due to the work of more than 50 Airwars researchers, volunteers and others carefully picking through the complicated information environment to produce hundreds of assessments of individual civilian harm events.
Among them are: Abdulwahab Tahhan, Anna Zahn, Azul De Monte, Clarie Alspektor, Clive Vella, David Shrestha, Duncan Salkovskis, Giacomo Nanni, Iryna Chupryna, Lily Donahue, Mohammed al Halabi, Poppy Wallis and Shihab Halep. A more complete list of our 2023 and 2024 volunteers is available here.
The research team at Airwars continues to document the names of those killed, with the aim of detailing every allegation of civilian harm from explosive weapons in Gaza. You can donate to this work here.
Why does this investigation only include civilian casualties from the 7th October to the 24th October?
The first MoH list was released on the 26th October 2023 and only records casualties from the beginning of the war on 7th October, until the 24th. Therefore, we have only included incidents in the Airwars archive within this time period.
How did Airwars determine the list of names featured in this investigation?
As of the 26th June 2024, Airwars has identified 3,259 civilians killed between the 7th to 24th October 2023 in Gaza in 348 separate incidents of harm related to the use of explosive weapons. Our research team identifies victims from a range of open sources, including local news agencies, NGOs and crucially, obituaries posted online by family members.
The list featured in this investigation is a snapshot of our archive from the 26th June 2024. We are continually publishing incidents and documenting civilian harm in Gaza. We consider our published incidents as ‘live’, and should be updated over time to account for new information that may come to light, or may not have been identified by Airwars during the original research.
See our archive for the most current version of our civilian harm monitoring in Gaza.
How did Airwars determine which victims are fully named?
Fully named victims are those recorded with at least a given name and last name. There are many casualties in our archive that we have recorded to be killed, however sources only list them by relational descriptors, such as ‘mother of’ or ‘wife of’ or ‘child of’ as a primary name. We found 218 victims who were only identified by relational descriptors, most of whom were women or children. Additionally, we found 48 individuals who were only recorded by their given name. Overall, we determined that 266 victims were unable to be matched with the MoH list due to limited availability of information.
Out of the total victims Airwars has recorded, we identified 2993 individuals with full names. From here, we found 2236 of these names on the MoH list, equalling a 75% reconciliation rate.
How does Airwars distinguish between civilians and militants?
Airwars assumes civilian status of victims, unless we find evidence to the contrary. In these cases, we capture the details of militants killed or injured in events alongside civilians - but militants would not be included in our figures. Where we have found militants among the MoH lists, we have included this reference in our incident summary.
See our methodology page for more information on how we assess civilian harm.How do we attribute incidents to the different parties to the conflict?
Extensive additional civilian casualties are caused by other parties to the conflicts we monitor. These include government forces and allied militias; and militant and terror groups. All incidents that Airwars have monitored are cross-checked with official statements from the Israel Defense Forces, militant wings of Hamas and other Palestinian military groups. It is important to note that realtime conflict casualty monitoring presents significant challenges. Airwars reports known information on alleged strikes and casualties in good faith, though we are often unable to follow up or to further verify such claims.
See our methodology page for a detailed description of how we attribute explosive weapons to different parties.
Are Airwars reports updated if more information emerges?
Yes. Airwars’ work is typically limited to what is available via open sources and therefore does not claim to be exhaustive. Airwars’ civilian harm assessments remain permanently open. In the case that additional information comes to light, they will be adjusted. This can include biographical information about the victims, whether they have been incorrectly categorised as a militant or civilian and additional information about who was responsible for the strike. Some assessments from previous conflicts have been updated many years after publication, following the emergence of additional documentation and evidence. Those looking to submit additional information for specific assessments please email info [at] airwars [dot] org
How does Airwars attribute incidents to the different parties to the conflict?
Attribution of incidents to parties to the conflict is based on a categorisation of open source claims, alongside cross-checks where possible with statements from militant or military groups. Yet only a small proportion of incidents are ever conceded by conflict parties. Without a full investigation into each incident, including identification of evidence such as munition fragments, confirming the perpetrator remains a challenge.
Airwars’ methodology has been designed to address this - categorising open source attribution in real time, and naming likely perpetrators based on the degree of consensus among local sources. As with all Airwars incidents, each case is intended to be a starting point for others to conduct further investigation. This approach has led to admissions of harm by militaries themselves, such as hundreds of US conceded harm cases in the war against ISIS, and prompted investigations by others.
Read more about our attribution methodology here.
Methodology
