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GAZA’S UNCOUNTED DEAD

By Ruby Mellen
, 
Hajar Harb
, 
Miriam Berger
, 
Loveday Morris
and 
Júlia Ledur
October 9, 2024 at 2:00 a.m. EDT
11 min
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One minute, Haya Shabaka was brewing tea in her sister Abeer’s Gaza City home.
The next, she and her relatives were plunged into darkness, said Abeer Shabaka,
who was in the other room when an Israeli strike hit their building on Dec. 6.

“I felt that we were all underground,” Abeer recounted. “I heard my mother
scream, but I did not know where she was. I saw Haya. She looked like she was
asleep.”

Abeer said she screamed and screamed until help came, and was eventually pulled
from the rubble. Her mother and sister are still buried underneath.

“I wish I had been killed with them,” Abeer said. The Israeli military said it
was targeting a gathering of militants.

Without their bodies, or confirmation of their deaths, their family was unable
to register them with Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

They remain uncounted.

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On the week that Haya died, more than 2,000 people were reported dead by the
ministry in Gaza.

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Since then, according to its figures, nearly 25,000 more have been killed.

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In the year-long war — which began after Hamas-led attacks on Israel killed some
1,200 people, mostly civilians — Israeli military operations have taken 41,965
lives as of Oct. 8, according to the ministry.

3 / 4

The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but says the
majority of those killed have been women and children.

4 / 4

Experts say the true death toll is likely much higher.

In mid-August, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said more than 17,000 militants had
been killed in Gaza, but did not say how the military arrived at the figure.

During the war, some 2 million Palestinians have been displaced, pushed into
ever-shrinking spaces, and Hamas fighters have taken shelter among them. Israel
has used that as a justification to bomb hospitals, schools, mosques and tent
encampments.

The Israeli military said it exerts “significant efforts” to avoid harm to
civilians, including through evacuation orders. Spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav
Shoshani said the IDF does not have an estimate for the number of civilians it
has killed, pointing to how long it took for Israel to work out how many of its
own citizens had died on Oct. 7. He described every civilian death as a
“tragedy.”

In the early days of the conflict, medical staff at each hospital in Gaza logged
the name, gender and identification number of each victim that passed through,
and the Health Ministry put out a daily death toll by combining those figures.
As the months passed, and Gaza’s medical system collapsed, it became much more
difficult to count the dead.

The ongoing chaos of the war upended what researchers say was once a robust
reporting system for tracking and identifying the dead. Starting in November,
the ministry included both identified and unidentified bodies that passed
through hospitals and morgues, while it worked to put a name to each victim.

But the latest Ministry of Health report still includes around 6,000
unidentified bodies.

Then there are the uncounted — those who died under the rubble or were buried by
family members without ever being taken to a hospital or morgue. This story
focuses on their cases.


KHALIL AWAD, 61

Khalil Awad loved children. He owned a small sweets shop in Gaza City and often
gave free candy to the kids on the street, said his niece, Faten Awad.

“Time passed quickly with him,” she said.

On the night of Dec. 1, the house in Gaza City where Khalil was sheltering was
bombed, killing him and 23 of his relatives, including his two children,
according to Faten. The IDF said it was not aware of a strike at the location.

“We were shocked,” Faten said. She had just spoken with him the day before.

Because of intense fighting in northern Gaza, it took Faten three months to
reach the destroyed home. When she arrived, she started to dig through the
rubble with her hands. But all she could recover were fragments of clothes and
bones.

She wrapped their remains in shrouds and buried them.

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Like the deaths in the Awad family, many others have gone unrecorded.

A clearer picture may not emerge until the war is over and researchers —
currently banned by Israel from entering Gaza — can access the enclave.

Families are unable to register their dead for a variety of reasons, said Mike
Spagat, a professor who specializes in casualty figures at Royal Holloway,
University of London.

It’s unclear how many bodies have passed through hospitals without being
registered, he said, or whose relatives may not have been able to log their
deaths through a new online process.

In some families — where multiple generations have been wiped out in an instant
— there might simply be no one left to document their loss.

Since the beginning of the war, researchers at Airwars, a British watchdog that
tracks harm to civilians, have scoured open sources for the identities of those
killed in Israeli strikes. Names are pulled from internet posts, news articles
and, where possible, from the sides of body bags, then cross-checked against
Ministry of Health lists.

Graphic depicts all deaths in Gaza between Oct. 7 and Oct. 24, 2023

Uncounted deaths in Gaza between Oct. 7 and Oct. 24, 2023 are highlighted. They
represent 31% of all deaths in that period.

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The organization identified nearly 3,000 deaths in the first 17 days of the war.

1 / 4

A Washington Post analysis of the Airwars data found that more than 30 percent
were not listed by the health ministry.

2 / 4

On Oct. 9, 2023, an airstrike on the Jabalya refugee camp killed Muhammad Nabil
Saadat and his cousin Ismail, along with dozens of others. Muhammad’s name
appeared on the Health Ministry’s list, according to Airwars. Ismail’s did not.

3 / 4

Airwars said seven members of the Al Zwaidi family were killed in the same
attack. None of them were included in the official count.

4 / 4

Data gleaned from open-source information can only provide a limited window, but
it all points to an undercount of deaths, said Emily Tripp, director of Airwars.

“What we’ve been able to capture is just a fraction of the reality,” she said.


MAHMOUD ABDEL GHAFOUR, 14

Mahmoud Abdel Ghafour wanted to be a doctor when he grew up, said his sister,
20-year-old Miryam Abdel Ghafour. He loved to play soccer and eat shawarma. His
mother spoiled him because he was the youngest child.

On Dec. 7, as the Israeli army pressed further into the southern city of Khan
Younis, a strike hit the family home, killing Mahmoud and his parents. The IDF
said it was not aware of a strike at that time and location.

From left: Salama Abdel Ghafour, Maryam Abdel Ghafour and Mahmoud Abdel Ghafour.
(Family photo)

Miryam and Mahmoud had relocated to their uncle’s house earlier that month. Two
days before the attack their mother asked them to come home. Miryam said it was
too dangerous and decided to stay. Her mother told her to send Mahmoud back
alone.

“They were civilians and believed that no harm would befall them,” said another
relative, Yasser Abdel Ghafour, who lives in Egypt.

Workers ultimately recovered 17 bodies from the rubble, but were unable to find
Mahmoud and his family, Yasser said.

After ten months of searching, Yasser said, the family finally retrieved the
remains of their loved ones on Sept. 30.

“They were just bones,” he said. “But retrieving them is important to us so that
we can honor them by burying them in the family cemetery.”

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HATEM MOHAMMED ALKETANI, 35

Brothers Hatem and Hazem Alketani lived in houses across the street from each
other in the Tufah neighborhood of Gaza City, said their brother, Nader
Alketani.

The brothers and their wives took advantage of a quiet moment on Dec. 12 to go
outside and catch up with each other. They went back in just minutes before the
airstrike hit.



Hazem survived, pulling his injured wife and five daughters out of the rubble
with him. But no one could reach Hatem or his family under the wreckage.

The IDF said it was not aware of a strike in the area.

Before the war, Hatem was a fruit seller in one of Gaza City’s central squares,
said Nader, and liked to take his children to the beach.

The morning after the strike, Nader and some friends of his sneaked out of their
homes nearby, navigating through side roads and ruins to reach what remained of
his brother’s home — and family.

“We were able to extract Hatem’s wife with our own hands, who had been cut in
half. And we extracted the upper part of Hatem’s body,” Nader said. “But the
remaining five children are still under the rubble.”

The family did not have the strength to register them with the Health Ministry.
“My back was broken forever by the loss,” Nader said.


AYLOUL QAUD, 7

Like so many others, Ayloul Qaud and her family were displaced multiples times
during the war — moving south from Gaza City, first to Khan Younis and then to
Rafah. She died in June, a month before her eighth birthday.

Ayloul was sheltering in an encampment called Swedish Village, near the
Egypt-Gaza border, with her parents and two siblings, said her aunt Hiba Muqdad.
Hiba begged the family to come shelter with them in Khan Younis, but they
believed they were safe where they were.

Hiba spoke with her sister, Rawaa Qaud, on the evening of June 6. She could hear
Israeli tanks in the background.

“The last words she said to me were, ‘Tell my father that I miss him,’” Hiba
said.


(Al Qaud Family)

(Al Qaud Family)

Three days later, after losing touch with Rawaa, her father and brother traveled
to find them. Rawaa, her husband and children had all been killed, Hiba said.

Rawaa "had been shot in the back,” Hiba said, and was still holding Ayloul, who
appeared to have a head injury. The IDF said its forces were responding to an
“imminent threat” in the area.

Before they could bury or register the bodies, Hiba recounted, Israeli tanks
began shooting at them, so they fled the area.

Ayloul was “the most beautiful child I have ever seen in my life, inside and
out,” said Hiba, in between sobs. “We would walk in the street and she would
refuse to buy anything, knowing that other children in the street were unable to
eat the same thing.”


MOWEEN SHUHEIBER, 6

Moween Shuheiber’s relatives remember him as a mature, thoughtful child.



He died the morning of Nov. 17 when an Israeli airstrike hit his family’s home
in Gaza City, said his cousin Adham Shuheiber, who could see the wreckage from
his ground-floor window. Adham said they pulled 30 dead bodies from the rubble
that day. Eight others were injured and died later from their wounds because
there was no safe route to the hospital, he added.

The IDF said it was not aware of a strike in the area.

Moween died alongside his mother, father, sister, grandmother and aunt.

“I lost the meaning of life with the loss of my family members,” said
17-year-old Malak Shuheiber, Moween’s cousin. “But the loss of Moween had a
special impact on me.”

Malak said the boy dreamed of becoming a businessman with a luxury car, or a
pediatrician for children injured in war.

“I think he breathed his last while covering his ears,” said Malak. “Because
that’s what he did every time he heard the sounds of planes.”

ABOUT THIS STORY

All photos and videos, courtesy of the families.

Design and development by Yutao Chen.

Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage, Reem Akkad, Emily Eng, Joseph Moore and Jennifer
Samuel. Video editing by Joe Snell. Copy editing by Jamie Zega.

Sources: Casualties data is from Gaza’s Ministry of Health as of Oct. 8. Gaza’s
Ministry of Health did not release daily death tolls for most of Nov. 2023.
There was a pause in fighting between Nov. 24 and Nov. 30.

Data on uncounted deaths is from Airwars, whose researchers have analyzed the
first 17 days of war, cross-referencing open source reports of casualties with
the death toll list published by Gaza’s Ministry of Health.


MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT

The Israel-Gaza war has gone on for over a year, and tensions have spilled into
the surrounding Middle East region.



The war: On Oct. 7, Hamas militants launched an unprecedented cross-border
attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking civilian hostages. See
photos and videos of how the deadly assault unfolded. Israel declared war on
Hamas in response, launching a ground invasion that fueled the biggest
displacement in the region since Israel’s creation in 1948. In July 2024, Hamas
leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an attack Hamas has blamed on Israel.

Hezbollah: Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, a militant organization
backed by Iran, have escalated over the past year, leading to an Israeli
invasion of southern Lebanon. Israel’s airstrikes into Lebanon have grown more
intense and deadly, killing over 1,400 people including Hasan Nasrallah,
Hezbollah’s longtime leader. The Israel-Lebanon border has a history of violence
that dates back to Israel’s founding.

Gaza crisis: In the Gaza Strip, Israel has waged one of this century’s most
destructive wars, killing tens of thousands and plunging at least half of the
population into “famine-like conditions.” For months, Israel has resisted
pressure from Western allies to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclave.

U.S. involvement: Despite tensions between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and some U.S. politicians, including President Biden, the United
States supports Israel with weapons, funds aid packages, and has vetoed or
abstained from the United Nations’ cease-fire resolutions.

History: The roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mistrust are deep and
complex, predating the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Read more
on the history of the Gaza Strip.

Show more

Middle East conflict

Hand-curated

A timeline of conflict on the Israel-Lebanon border October 1, 2024
Israeli military deaths in Lebanon raise questions over war’s scope October 3,
2024
Hezbollah is undeterred as Lebanon braces for war with IsraelAugust 11, 2024
View all 19 stories

Ruby MellenRuby Mellen reports on foreign affairs for the Washington Post.
@rubymellen
Follow
Miriam BergerMiriam Berger, a staff writer on The Post's international news desk
in Washington, has since Oct. 7 been on assignment in Jerusalem, where she
covers Israel, the Palestinian territories and the war in Gaza. Before joining
The Post, she was based in Jerusalem and Cairo and was a freelance
reporter.@MiriamABerger
Follow
Loveday MorrisLoveday Morris is The Washington Post's Berlin bureau chief. She
was previously based in Jerusalem, Baghdad and Beirut for The Post.@LovedayM
Follow
Júlia LedurJúlia Ledur is a graphics reporter covering foreign news at The
Washington Post. Before joining The Post in 2021, she worked as a graphics
editor at the COVID Tracking Project at the Atlantic. Previously, she was on the
graphics team at Reuters, covering Latin American politics, the environment and
social issues with data and visuals. @juledurg
Follow


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