More than 100,000 Palestinians likely killed in Gaza, leading German institute says

At least 100,000 Palestinians were likely killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, according to a new study released by one of Germany's leading research institutes, the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Germany. 

The MPIDR published a report on Tuesday, determining that the number of people killed in the Gaza Strip is substantially higher than the Palestinian health ministry’s own figures. 

MPIDR is Europe's second-largest institution for demographic research and one of the largest worldwide.

The study estimated that 78,318 people were killed in Gaza between 7 October 2023 and the end of 2024 as a direct result of the war. In a subsequent analysis, the authors found that by 6 October 2025, the number of conflict-related deaths in Gaza had likely surpassed 100,000.

According to the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza, at least 69,733 people have been killed by Israel’s war on Gaza.

The MPIDR report cites the Gaza health ministry; the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B'Tselem); two United Nations entities, including the office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs and the inter-agency group for child mortality estimation; and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics as some of the public sources used for its data gathering.

“Life expectancy in Gaza fell by 44 percent in 2023 and by 47 percent in 2024 compared with what it would have been without the war - equivalent to losses of 34.4 and 36.4 years, respectively," the paper said. 

Israel’s war on Gaza started after the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel. 

Genocide

Over the next two years, Israel pummelled the enclave into rubble in an onslaught that the UN, human rights experts, genocide scholars and dozens of world leaders have concluded is a genocide. 

The recent report released by the UN conference on trade and development said bombardment of the enclave had created a "human-made abyss”. 

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While the Max Planck Institute’s death toll is much higher than that recorded by the Palestinian health ministry, the study refrained from weighing in on whether Israel’s assault constituted a genocide. 

"The study also found that the age and gender distribution of violent deaths in Gaza between October 7, 2023, and December 31, 2024, closely resembled the demographic patterns observed in several genocides documented by the United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME)."

“As genocide is a very specific legal term, certain additional criteria must be met for it to be applicable. This was not the focus of this study,” the report said. 

The scholars, however, detailed the statistical modelling used to determine what they called the “conflict-related mortality” in Gaza. 

“Our estimates of the impact of war on life expectancy in Gaza and Palestine are significant, but probably represent only a lower limit of the actual mortality burden,” Ana C Gomez-Ugarte, one of the authors of the report, said.

“Our analysis focuses exclusively on direct, conflict-related deaths. The indirect effects of war, which are often greater and more long-lasting, are not quantified in our considerations,” she added. 

A US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza began on 11 October. However, Israel has continued to strike the enclave in violation of the agreement. 

At least 339 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes amid nearly 500 ceasefire violations, according to Gaza authorities.