Casualty counts in war are often contested and hard to verify. After years of disputes over figures from Gaza’s health authorities since the outbreak of hostilities in October 2023, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have reportedly accepted estimates that 71,000 Palestinians have been killed.
Gaza’s health ministry figures have been seen by many international observers as broadly reliable, so the IDF’s apparent concurrence is not entirely surprising, Therese Pettersson of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) at Uppsala University told DW. The UCDP, which has compiled public casualty data for decades, provides a thorough record that makes denial of such losses more difficult, she said.
It is unusual for parties in conflict to agree on fatality numbers. For example, neither Moscow nor Kyiv publishes regular, likely accurate, tallies of their own losses in the Russia-Ukraine war; Russia has not given an official update on its losses in more than three years. Warring sides often inflate enemy losses and downplay their own to boost morale or present success, UCDP analyst Shawn Davies said.
Casualty monitoring draws on many sources — official notifications, hospital and morgue reports, eyewitness testimony, media reporting and social media — and monitors cross-check and validate information, often through networks on the ground. Different groups apply different rules to filter unreliable reports. UCDP tends to trust admitted losses from a party but treats claims about opponents more cautiously. UCDP’s approach is conservative: it counts deaths only, not injuries or missing people, aiming to provide a baseline for tracking conflict trends.
Other methods exist. A recent CSIS report used diverse sources, including the UK Ministry of Defence, Mediazona, BBC Russian and interviews with officials, to estimate very large Russia-Ukraine casualties: nearly 1.2 million Russian battlefield casualties (killed, wounded and missing), with 275,000–325,000 Russian deaths by December 2025, and up to 600,000 Ukrainian casualties including 100,000–140,000 fatalities. Davies said UCDP’s best estimate for Russian fatalities is around 350,000.
For casualty researchers, every body matters. Lily Hamourtziadou, who has worked with Iraq Body Count and other monitors, said the IDF’s reported agreement with Gaza figures is surprising but welcome, though she cautioned that parties might accept lower counts for various reasons. She argued that states using force have a responsibility to record who they kill — including names and ages — to document the human impact and provide dignity. Edited by: A. Thomas
