Israel accepts Gaza Health Ministry's estimate of 70,000 Palestinians killed during war

The Israel Defense Forces now accept the Gaza Health Ministry's estimation that over 70,000 Palestinians were killed during the war in Gaza, after years of denying the validity of the calculation.

Senior IDF sources told Haaretz, the Times of Israel, and other Israeli news outlets that the Gaza Health Ministry's calculations, an organization overseen by Hamas, were correct. The health ministry doesn't distinguish between militant and civilian deaths — that ratio is something the IDF is still trying to figure out. Shortly before the October ceasefire, the IDF claimed that it killed at least 22,000 Hamas and allied combatants.