Live updates: Follow the latest news on Israel-Gaza
Medical journal The Lancet has reported that it is “not implausible” for the Gaza death toll to have reached 186,000 or more since the Israeli bombardment began on October 7, 2023, considering direct and indirect causes.
The report, titled Counting the Dead in Gaza: Difficult but Essential, said that using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2,375,259, the death toll would be equivalent to 7.9 per cent.
The estimate, published on Friday, includes direct deaths from the conflict as well as indirect deaths from causes such as reproductive, communicable and non-communicable diseases.
“Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza,” the report said.
“The number of reported deaths is likely an underestimate.”
Tamara Al Rifai, the head of communications for the UN Palestinian Refugee agency, UNRWA, told The National that the agency takes figures from public sources including the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
“But if we compile all figures that credible entities, including the UN, have been issuing, then the scale and scope of death, injuries and life-changing accidents [including loss of limbs for children] are devastating,” Ms Rifai said.
Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestine, wrote on X, “That's one in every 12 Gaza inhabitants killed in the last nine months of genocide.”
Gaza's health authorities said on Monday that 38,193 Palestinians have been killed and 87,903 injured in Israel's military offensive that followed the Hamas attacks.
The Lancet report pointed to UN estimates that, by February 29, 2024, 35 per cent of buildings in the Gaza Strip had been destroyed.
“So the number of bodies still buried in the rubble is likely substantial, with estimates of more than 10,000,” The Lancet said.
The report said that Gaza's death toll is “expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population's inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to the UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organisations still active in the Gaza Strip.”
In May, the UN said more than 10,000 Palestinians were dead in the rubble and retrieval could take three years.
The Lancet is one of the world's most quoted medical journals.
Nadav Shoshani, the international spokesman for the Israeli army, rejected the report's estimated numbers and said “there is no correlation between the report's estimated numbers and reality”.
“No one should take seriously claims that do not meet the minimal standards of fact-checking,” he wrote on X.
In February, Johns Hopkins University estimated 70,000 “excess deaths”, including 10,000 from disease.
The Johns Hopkins study, Crisis in Gaza: Scenario-Based Health Impact Projections, looked at conflicts in the Middle East and “similar” settings.
Tak Igusa, one of the study’s authors, said their work “projected multiple health impacts, including non-communicable and infectious diseases, malnutrition, and maternal and newborn mortality. One of our findings is that there is a steadily increasing possibility of cholera, famine, and other humanitarian disasters that may result in higher mortality than the trauma deaths from the conflict”.
The projections and estimates are particularly complex because they involve multiple areas of study – including nutrition and the most vulnerable in a given population.
Since the start of the conflict, humanitarian organisations have repeatedly said that Gaza is getting only a fraction of its daily food and medical aid requirement, even during attempts to increase supplies.
Gaza’s humanitarian situation has worsened in some areas, as fighting shifted to a land crossing point at Rafah on the Egyptian border in May.
Hundreds of lorries loaded with food and water have been stranded there, some for nearly two months, awaiting permission to deliver supplies.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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Why are asylum seekers being housed in hotels?
The number of asylum applications in the UK has reached a new record high, driven by those illegally entering the country in small boats crossing the English Channel.
A total of 111,084 people applied for asylum in the UK in the year to June 2025, the highest number for any 12-month period since current records began in 2001.
Asylum seekers and their families can be housed in temporary accommodation while their claim is assessed.
The Home Office provides the accommodation, meaning asylum seekers cannot choose where they live.
When there is not enough housing, the Home Office can move people to hotels or large sites like former military bases.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
What sanctions would be reimposed?
Under ‘snapback’, measures imposed on Iran by the UN Security Council in six resolutions would be restored, including:
- An arms embargo
- A ban on uranium enrichment and reprocessing
- A ban on launches and other activities with ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, as well as ballistic missile technology transfer and technical assistance
- A targeted global asset freeze and travel ban on Iranian individuals and entities
- Authorisation for countries to inspect Iran Air Cargo and Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines cargoes for banned goods
