A new demographic analysis reveals that the ongoing war on Gaza has caused an unprecedented collapse in population survival rates, with researchers estimating that more than 78,000 Palestinians were killed between October 7, 2023, and December 31, 2024, and that the current death toll has likely already surpassed 100,000.

The findings come from a study conducted by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) and the Centre for Demographic Studies (CED), which examined the wide-ranging effects of the Israeli occupation’s assault on mortality in the Gaza Strip. The study warns that life expectancy in 2024 fell to nearly half of what it would have been without the war, marking one of the sharpest recorded demographic shocks in decades.

Researchers relied on public datasets from multiple humanitarian organizations and institutions, including the Gaza Ministry of Health, B’Tselem, OCHA, UN-IGME, and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Due to the chaos of conflict and communication disruptions, casualty documentation remains fragmented and incomplete, a challenge the study sought to directly address.

New modeling to account for data uncertainty

“The tension between data limitations and the demand for meaningful metrics was the impetus for this study. We demonstrate that these challenges do not have to be mutually exclusive,” said lead researcher Ana C. Gómez-Ugarte. “Our goal is to estimate life expectancy and the losses in life expectancy caused by the Gaza conflict in Palestine in a way that accounts for incomplete or sparse data.”

To achieve this, the team developed a pseudo-Bayesian approach that accounts for two major sources of error: the under-reporting of fatalities and the lack of disaggregated data by age and gender. These factors, the study notes, lead to underestimates of the true death toll and its long-term demographic impacts.

NEW | Gaza Death Toll Likely Exceeds 100,000, Max-Planck Study finds at least 100,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza during the more than two-year-long Israeli genocide. Between October 7, 2023 - October 6, 2025, around 112,000 Palestinians were killed, including 27%…

— Ghassan Abu Sitta (@GhassanAbuSitt1) November 25, 2025

The research initially estimated that 78,318 people were killed in Gaza from October 7, 2023, to the end of 2024. A subsequent update found that by October 6, 2025, nearly two years into the aggression, total violent deaths likely exceeded 100,000.

Death toll surpasses 100,000

“As a result of this unprecedented mortality, life expectancy in Gaza fell by 44% in 2023 and by 47% in 2024 compared with what it would have been without the war,” Gómez-Ugarte said, noting a loss of more than 34 years of life in 2023 and over 36 years in 2024.

The demographic pattern of deaths, affecting all age groups at high rates, was found to resemble trends documented in several genocides examined by UN-IGME, although the researchers emphasized that legal classification was not the study’s objective.

The authors caution that their figures likely reflect only a baseline estimate of the human toll. The analysis focuses solely on direct violent deaths, without including deaths from starvation, disease, the collapse of medical care, or lack of vital supplies, indirect impacts that often exceed the scale of battlefield fatalities.

“Urgency should not be an excuse for a lack of methodological rigor,” Gómez-Ugarte added, urging the international research community to incorporate uncertainty transparently when documenting war-related mortality.

Hospitals collapse amid deepening crisis

More than 100,000 people remain wounded in the Gaza Strip, with at least 17,000 in urgent need of evacuation due to the collapse of medical services, according to Salah Abdel Shafi, the Palestinian ambassador to Vienna.

Speaking to RIA Novosti, Shafi warned that "out of 36 hospitals, only eight are partially functioning," as the rest have been completely or largely destroyed. With Gaza’s health system in ruins and medical supplies critically low, there is no capacity to treat the wounded locally.

The ambassador added that infrastructure across the strip has been devastated. "There is an acute shortage of medical supplies and medicine in the Gaza Strip," he said, stressing the urgent need for international intervention.

Earlier, Shafi told RIA Novosti that roughly 80% of the Gaza Strip has been destroyed, with over a million people forced to live in tents or out in the open.