Shocking Leak: 83% of Gaza’s dead are civilians

The Guardian reported that it had obtained secret documents from Israeli military intelligence (Aman), revealing that for every six people killed in Gaza, five were civilians.

A joint investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian magazine +972, and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call found that by May—19 months into the war—Israeli intelligence officials recorded that 8,900 known fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad had been killed or were “likely killed.” Meanwhile, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 53,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks.

According to the Guardian, this means that 83% of the victims were civilians.

Statistics expert Therese Pettersson commented on this ratio: “The level of civilian casualties is extraordinarily high, especially given that it has lasted for more than a year and a half. In some cities or individual battles, you may see similar proportions, but across entire wars this is extremely rare.”

She added that since 1989, only the Bosnian war, the Rwandan genocide, and the siege of Mariupol in 2022 have seen higher civilian-to-combatant ratios—though not across the entirety of the Bosnian conflict.

The Guardian noted that the Israeli military has not denied the existence of the database or the casualty figures for Hamas and Islamic Jihad. However, when asked for comment, the army spokesperson said their response would be “revised.” The short statement sent by the spokesperson did not directly answer the questions, merely claiming: “The numbers provided are incorrect and do not reflect the data held in army systems.”

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, as of 14 May 2025, 52,928 people had been killed in Israeli attacks. Experts believe the true toll may be even higher, since the ministry only records recovered bodies, excluding thousands still buried under rubble.

An Israeli intelligence field source told the Guardian: “People get upgraded to ‘terrorist’ status after death. If I listened to the battalion reports, I would conclude we had killed 200% of Hamas fighters in the area.”

Retired Israeli General Yitzhak Brik, a fierce critic of Netanyahu, said: “There is no connection between the numbers being announced and what is really happening—it’s just one big bluff.” He added that in meetings with soldiers tasked with identifying Palestinians killed in Gaza, they told him: “Most of them were civilians.”

According to the Guardian, many Israeli soldiers testified that all Palestinians in Gaza are treated as targets. One soldier who was stationed in Rafah this year said his unit drew an “imaginary line” in the sand and fired at anyone who crossed it—including twice at children and once at a woman.

He added: “The goal of the shooting was to kill, not to warn. Nobody aimed at their legs.”

Neta Crawford, a professor of international relations at Oxford University and co-founder of the Costs of War project, said Israeli tactics marked a “worrisome” abandonment of decades of practices developed to protect civilians.

The ratio of civilian casualties among the dead may have increased further since May, when Israel tried to replace UN and humanitarian organisations that had fed Palestinians throughout the war. Israeli forces have killed hundreds of people trying to get food from distribution centres in military exclusion zones.

Now starving survivors, already forced into just 20% of the territory, have been ordered to leave the north as Israel prepares for another ground operation that is likely to have catastrophic consequences for civilians.