New research suggests Gaza’s death toll may be far higher than widely reported, with devastating implications for life expectancy, poverty and accountability.

Israel’s two-year assault on Gaza has left a catastrophic death toll that is even worse than most official estimates, according to research from European researchers.

A study  released on Tuesday by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany and the Center for Demographic Studies in Spain found that “the current violent death toll” in Gaza “likely exceeds 100,000” since the start of the war in October 2023.

In fact, the researchers estimate that the total death toll from the war among Palestinians in Gaza is between 99,997 and 125,915, with a median estimate of over 112,000 killed. Even the lowest death toll estimate in the study is significantly higher than the death toll estimates in most media reports, which as of this week totalled roughly 70,000 Palestinians killed.

The researchers said that the wide range of death toll estimates is a reflection of “distorted and incomplete data from conflict zones” that make precise estimates difficult.

Researcher Irena Chen, who co-led the project,  told Turkish publication AA that “we will never know the exact number of dead” and added that “we are only trying to estimate as accurately as possible what a realistic order of magnitude might be.”

The study also found that the two-year Israeli assault led to a precipitous plunge in life expectancy. According to researcher Ana Gómez-Ugarte, life expectancy in Gaza “fell by 44 per cent in 2023 and by 47 per cent in 2024 compared with what it would have been without the war – equivalent to losses of 34.4 and 36.4 years, respectively.”

The study’s final estimates were based on data from multiple public sources, including including the Gaza Ministry of Health (GMoH), the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’Tselem), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN-IGME), and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that the new study was “further evidence of genocide” being carried out by the Israeli government.

Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy executive director for CAIR, called the study “only the latest reason why our government must stop sending American taxpayer dollars to Israel and why international courts must hold Israel accountable for its crimes.”

Mitchell added that “all those responsible for this mass slaughter must face accountability, starting with Netanyahu and other members of his openly racist, genocidal, and warmongering regime.”

A report released by UN Conference on Trade and Development earlier this week found that Israel’s genocidal assault has had a devastating impact on Gaza’s economy, finding that its entire population is now living below the poverty line, with per-capita gross domestic product falling to just $161 –  one of the lowest figures in the world.

Additionally, the report found that the unemployment rate in Gaza was as high as 80 per cent, while inflation in the exclave surged to nearly 240 per cent, as the Israeli military blockade caused a widespread famine by preventing basic necessities from reaching Gaza residents.

Republished from Common Dreams, 26 November 2025