On Thursday, Gaza’s Health Ministry published a list of 16,506 Palestinian children it has identified who have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza since October 2023.
The first 27 pages list 917 babies who didn’t make it to their first birthdays. The list also includes 4,365 children killed between the ages of one and five, 6,101 who were between six and 12, and 5,124 who were between 13 and 17 years old.
The full 486-page list includes names, ID numbers, birth dates, ages, and how the children were confirmed killed, whether by the Health Ministry’s own records or through reports from their families.
The US has continued to back Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza despite the mass slaughter of children.
Since the Health Ministry’s list is of children who have been fully identified, it is likely a significant undercount. A study published by The Lancet earlier this year that used a statistical method called capture-recapture analysis estimated that the Health Ministry’s numbers likely under-reported violent deaths by 41%.
The Economist recently extrapolated the data from The Lancet study to get an idea of what the death toll might be now. On May 5, the Health Ministry’s total death toll was 52,615. The Economist report determined that the real toll based on the study was between 77,000 and 109,000.
These figures only include Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes, gunfire, or other types of violence and do not take into account indirect deaths caused by the blockade.
