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.
7 Oct 2023
Names are grouped together by incident. Clicking on an individual name will take you to the relevant report in the Airwars archive.
As you scroll, key incidents and trends will be highlighted - helping explain both the methodology and some of the challenges in matching the datasets. Use the navigation above to jump between key points.
Family members of those recorded in this list who would like to provide more details, to correct inaccuracies, or to request that their names be removed can contact info [at] airwars [dot] org.
The First 17 Days
The first weeks of the war in Gaza were among the deadliest for civilians in modern warfare.
A million Palestinians were ordered to flee as Israel used heavy munitions to strike targets throughout the strip, with multi story residential buildings, mosques and hospitals destroyed or damaged. Israel argued the violence was necessary to destroy Hamas and prevent future attacks but critics saw it as collective punishment of Gaza's two million residents.
Airwars researchers tracked more allegations of civilian harm in October 2023 than in any month of its 10-year history of monitoring - including the US-led campaign against ISIS, the NATO-led coalition in Libya and the Russian bombardment of Syria. Around one in every four allegations involved at least 10 civilians reportedly killed - far higher than any previous conflict Airwars has monitored. In this list alone, there are at least two incidents in which more than 50 civilians were reportedly killed.
With such intensity of bombardment, understanding the full civilian death toll is a difficult but vital challenge. Yamen Al-Madhoun, who leads the documentation team at the Gaza-based human rights organisation Al-Mezan, said they had been forced to reduce field research a few days into the war to protect their staff, and they still faced major difficulties. International journalists have also been largely prevented from accessing Gaza.
Al-Madhoun said open source research helped partly fill these gaps by allowing researchers “to compare what eyewitnesses say with what was published on open sources.”
8 Oct 2023
9 Oct 2023
Identifying Families
Extended families in Gaza are typically large, with sometimes thousands of members. Many have lost dozens, even hundreds, of relatives in the war. Facebook groups that once shared details of family reunions and football matches now post lists of their dead. Al-Madhoun, from Al Mezan, said that typically these posts are to inform wider family networks, but that people “also publish them to be used for documentation and to obtain justice later. [Such posts] can be important for long-term documentation and accountability.”
On October 9th 2023, an alleged Israeli airstrike in the Jabalia refugee camp killed at least 69 people, one of the highest number of civilians killed in a single incident within this list. According to Amnesty International, the strike hit the vicinity of a market crowded with people fleeing their homes after Israeli evacuation orders. Out of 61 victims whose names were identified by public reporting, 37 also appeared on the MoH list. By collating obituaries posted on social media, Airwars identified at least ten families that lost multiple members.
A post from Naeem Karama named six members of the Al Kafarna family killed. All six also appeared on the MoH list.
The Al Kurdi family Facebook group posted an obituary mourning two brothers, Thaer Talal Ramadan Murad Al-Kurdi and Ezzedine Yasser Ramadan Murad Al-Kurdi. Both featured on the MoH list.
Airwars researchers found two out of five members of the Odeh family on the MoH list. Hudhayfah Arif Ali Abdulaziz Abu Odeh, Thaer Saadi Abu Odeh and his son Ali Thaer Saadi Abu Odeh were not on the MoH list. Thaer’s sister-in-law reported that there was no trace of the son’s body following the attack.
Ansam Ahmed reported that his cousin, Youssef Rabaa, as well as Muhammad Fares Rabaa and his brother Yazan Fares Rabaa, were killed in the strike. Both Youssef and Yazan’s names appeared on the MoH list. Yazan was eight years old.
Medoo Samer posted about the deaths of Yasmine Muhammad Abu Shouqfa, her husband Naeem Abdel Fattah Rashid Atallah and their son Karem Atallah. Bashir Rafiq Abu Shouqfa was also reported killed, but it is unclear if they are related. Yasmine, Naeem and Bashir’s names were on the MoH list, but Karem’s was not.
Through Facebook posts by loved ones of the Abu Shukhian family, researchers recorded thirteen casualties belonging to the family. Of these, nine appeared on the MoH list - the youngest being four-year-old Anas Nasser Abu Al-Fahm.
Mustafa Hussein Abu Al Eish and his two sons were reported killed on Facebook. All three appeared on the MoH list.
Seven members of the Al Zwaidi family were publicly reported killed, but their names were not on the MoH list.
Mahmoud Saadat reported the death of his cousins Muhammad Nabil Saadat and Ismail Nabil Saadat. Muhammad’s name appeared on the MoH list but Ismail’s did not.
A post from Ibrahim Adwan reported that his cousins Imad Murshid Adwan and Yahya Murshid Adwan, who was recently married, were both killed, as well as a young man named Muhammad Waked Adwan. Both Imad and Muhammad appeared on the MoH list.
All2,993
Of the 2,993 victims whose full identities were recorded from October 7-24th, 2,236 names also appeared on the MoH list. These were broken down into men, women and children, as well as a separate category for those whose age and/or gender could not be confirmed. Across the first three categories, there was at least an 80% match with the MoH list.
Of the 1,557 adult victims identified, Airwars researchers found 1,300 of these names on the MoH list, an 83% overall match between the two lists.
Of the 852 civilian men Airwars monitored killed in Gaza during this time period, 733 victims' names appeared on the MoH list - an 86% overall match.
Of the 705 women publicly reported killed, 567 of these names appeared on the MoH list - an 80% overall match.
Children made up the largest group of civilian casualties. Out of 1,129 children killed, Airwars found 936 of those names on the MoH list - an 83% overall match.
Airwars could not confirm the ages of 307 named victims, and as such they were not categorised as either adults or children.
10 Oct 2023
Challenges with Women’s Names
One particular challenge with matching open-source reports to the MoH list came with the identification of women. As per Arabic naming customs, many women are referred to in public sources discussing their death by their marital status, such as “the wife of [name of their husband],” or by their parental status, such as “the mother of [name of their first son]”. While men can often be referred to as “father of,” they are commonly given their full name as well.
Additionally, women may be listed by their maiden name on the MoH, but their married name in open sources.
Out of the victims identified, at least 81 women had incomplete names - making it impossible to match them to the MoH list.
In the highlighted incident, seven members of the Al Araj family were killed when an alleged Israeli airstrike hit their home in Nuseirat refugee camp on October 10th. The victims were a mother, her five children and their elderly grandmother. All five children, as well as their mother, were fully named and appeared on the MoH list. However, the children's grandmother was only publicly referred to as Umm Mohammad Araj (“mother of Mohammad Araj”) and therefore could not be matched to the MoH list.
11 Oct 2023
12 Oct 2023
13 Oct 2023
14 Oct 2023
Missing Bodies, Missing Names
The first list released by the Ministry of Health relied on identifying bodies as they entered morgues across Gaza. Individuals killed but whose bodies were not recovered are therefore unaccounted for in the MoH figures. Within this list, there are incidents where both civilians and NGOs have reported that victims were missing due to bodies being trapped under rubble.
On October 14th, Airwars recorded an alleged Israeli strike destroying the al Herbawi family home in Jabalia, killing at least 34 civilians from five different families. This included 12 women and 11 children, with at least 80 civilians injured. In a Facebook post detailing the deaths of his eleven family members, Gehad Abu Yazan stated that there were still missing people under the rubble. Four days after the strike, Abu Muhammad, whose sister and mother-in-law were also killed, posted that “there are still missing women and children”. From this incident, 27 victims were not found on the MoH list.
15 Oct 2023
16 Oct 2023
17 Oct 2023
Headline Figures vs Periodic Lists
Whilst this investigation relates only to the first MoH list of victims, published on October 26th, 2023, the MoH has since published three more - most recently on April 30th this year. Separate from these periodic lists, the MoH occasionally releases headline figures for civilian tolls in specific incidents. However these announcements do not typically include the names of the casualties, making reconciliation with the wider lists difficult.
One such example is the al Ahli Arab hospital explosion on October 17th, 2023. The incident saw a fierce dispute as to whether the casualties were caused by a misfiring Palestinian militant rocket fired at Israel or an Israeli air or artillery strike. Human Rights Watch found the evidence pointed to a misfired rocket, though no investigation uncovered a definitive answer.
The day after the strike, the MoH announced a death toll of 471 casualties, but the names of the victims were not published. With such limited information, it is impossible to know which names on the first MoH list are related to that incident. Airwars' open source assessment identified dozens of civilian victims, but this list is not exhaustive.
In other incidents where specific tolls were released, such as a strike on December 24th in which the MoH announced at least 70 people were killed, the open source evidence closely matched the MoH death toll - with Airwars researchers identifying a minimum of 67 victims.
Death Tolls Spanning Generations
In Gaza, a home belonging to one family might house members across three or more generations with streets and even blocks sometimes named after family groups. Since the war began, many families have been sheltering together during heavy bombardment, meaning strikes that hit residential buildings can wipe out entire family units.
The youngest known casualty in this incident was one-year old Eileen Muhammad Abu al-Naja, killed alongside 19 members of her family in an alleged Israeli airstrike on the Abu al-Naja and Madhi family homes. Her great-grandmother, 78 year-old Farhana Musa Abu al-Naja, was the oldest reported casualty. She died alongside her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Fifteen members of the family appeared on the MoH list, including Farhana and Eileen.
18 Oct 2023
19 Oct 2023
Militants and Civilians
A large criticism of the Ministry of Health data is that it does not state whether those listed are civilians or militants. The names collected in the first list were gathered from morgues and hospitals, where information beyond victim demographics is rarely known. A statement from the Ministry of Health to Airwars said it “records all martyrs who arrive at hospitals and is unable to distinguish between civilians and militants.”
Airwars only documents the names of civilians killed in its assessments - assuming civilian status unless there is evidence to the contrary. Where militants are killed alongside civilians, this is noted in the incident summary.
One such incident occurred on October 19th, when an Israeli airstrike killed Major General Jihad Abd Suleiman Muhaisen - commander of the Hamas-run Palestinian National Security Forces in Gaza. 18 members of his family, including six women and nine children, were also killed. They were all reported to be civilians. The Israeli military hailed the “elimination” of Muhaisen, but did not mention the civilians killed alongside him.
All but one of the 18 civilians killed appeared on the MoH list, but so did Jihad Abd Suleiman Muhaisen - along with his ID. This, and other similar incidents, provided evidence that at least some militants appeared on the list. As Airwars only reviewed incidents in which civilians were reportedly harmed, the research could not estimate how many militants were included in the MoH list - however demographic analysis suggests the vast majority of remaining names are civilians.
20 Oct 2023
21 Oct 2023
The Remaining 4,000
The MoH list from October 26th included nearly 7,000 names, of which Airwars has matched 2,236 reported civilians. Are these names representative of the full list? Demographic analysis appears to show they are.
Throughout the war, the death rate for women and children has been used as a proxy to determine civilian casualties. Airwars conducted an analysis of the remaining 4,000 names on the MoH list to assess whether our data of victims over-represented women and children.
It found that the breakdown of gender and age of the remaining victims closely aligned with those in the Airwars data. In the matched names, 67% of the total were women and children, compared to 64% in the remaining MoH list. Spagat, the professor specialised in casualty figures, said this suggests the Airwars list of victims was “representative of the deaths the MoH captures through its monitoring systems and vice versa.”
22 Oct 2023
23 Oct 2023
24 Oct 2023
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
