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Mass casualty airstrikes in Gaza have captured headlines around the world, but doubt has been cast on the reliability of fatality figures in the warzone. 

Confusion is common in the immediate aftermath of attacks in any conflict, but even Gaza’s official count of the number killed, based on hospital administrative data, has come under scrutiny.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says 9,061 people have been killed since 7 October, two-thirds of them women and children.

Last week, an Israeli military spokesman said the ministry “continuously inflates the number of civilian casualties”. That concern was echoed by US President Joe Biden, who said he has “no confidence” in the figures.

Israel’s fatality figures have not attracted the same scepticism. The Israeli military says that “over 1,400” people were killed by Hamas on 7 October, with police estimating that 1,033 were civilians. A further 20 Israeli soldiers have been killed during ground operations in Gaza, according to the Associated Press.

Whereas journalists and UN investigators have been able to visit the Israeli villages attacked by Hamas to corroborate the figures, Israel has not allowed observers to enter Gaza since the war began.

Analysts say that even for Gazan journalists, periodic phone and internet outages, widespread fuel shortages and the risk of airstrikes have hindered movement within the territory.

“Another challenge is the intensity of the bombardment,” says Emily Tripp, director of Airwars, an organisation specialising in the verification of air strike casualties.

“If the war stops tomorrow, it’ll probably take us another three or four months just to really go through everything properly.”

Satellite imagery shows graveyards expanding

Social media videos and satellite imagery have become crucial resources in allowing outside observers to verify individual incidents, as well as to show the scale of the killing.

Footage posted online, for instance, shows the rapid expansion of cemeteries in Gaza, where dozens of new, makeshift graves have been dug.

Sky News was able to locate this video, uploaded to Snapchat on 19 October, to a cemetery on the outskirts of Gaza City.

“This is Al-Batish cemetery, these graves are all new,” the person capturing the video says.

“People are leaving their dead ones here. May God forgive the martyrs.”

Satellite imagery of the cemetery, taken on the same day, shows a bulldozer digging new graves.

Satellite image of a bulldozer at Al-Batish cemetery, eastern Gaza City, taken on 19 October 2023. SOURCE: Maxar Technologies
Image:
Satellite image of a bulldozer at Al-Batish cemetery, eastern Gaza City, taken on 19 October 2023. SOURCE: Maxar Technologies

In central Gaza, the Deir al-Balah cemetery has also started to expand.

A worker at the cemetery, Diaa Aqel, said: “[On 9 October] more than 500 martyrs were buried in the cemetery, and we opened the old graves there. […] There was no room left at all.”

Satellite imagery obtained by Sky News shows how the cemetery has undergone a significant expansion.

Sky News has identified the newly-cleared land as the location of mass graves. The video below shows the burial of 33 people, including 15 members of one family, in this part of the cemetery on 23 October.

The footage below, taken at the same site six days later, shows dozens of breeze blocks being used as makeshift headstones.

In a statement on Telegram on 21 October, Gaza’s ministry of religious affairs authorised the digging of mass graves for those killed during the bombings. Authorities say that each governorate has at least two mass graves, some holding over 100 people.

The scale of the conflict and the difficulty of obtaining on-the-ground documentation means that open-source verification can, for now, only provide a partial view of the war’s impact.

“There’s nothing that would lead us to distrust the numbers”

In the meantime, outside observers are likely to continue relying on Gaza’s ministry of health for an overall picture of the number of fatalities.

“The ministry of health in Gaza has historically been fairly reliable,” Tripp says.

“They know the number of people in hospitals, they’ve got the infrastructure, they’ve got the data.”

In recent Gaza wars, figures published by the ministry of health during the fighting have ended up being broadly in line with those later produced by the UN and Israel Defence Forces.

In response to the questions raised about the reliability of their statistics, the ministry recently published the names and ages of all 6,474 victims who had been identified.

In a recent investigation into an airstrike in Gaza City, Airwars verified the death of surgeon Dr Medhat Saidam and 23 of his family members.

“We were able to find pretty much every one of those names in the ministry of health database,” Tripp says.

Dr Saidam had just returned home after a seven-day shift at his hospital when the strike hit. Among those killed were his mother and his brother’s three young children, aged 6, 9 and 11.

Dr Medhat Mahmoud Saidam, 47, was killed in an airstrike at his home in Gaza on 14 October along with 23 family members. Source: @Gredtoo
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Dr Medhat Mahmoud Saidam, 47, was killed in an airstrike at his home in Gaza on 14 October along with 23 family members. SOURCE: @Gredtoo

“I can say from that case, that what we’re seeing is that the open-source information at least corresponds to what the ministry of health is documenting,” says Tripp.

Brian Root, a senior quantitative analyst at Human Rights Watch, says the ministry’s figures have “always been comparable” to his own findings.

“There’s nothing that would lead us to distrust the numbers.”

Figures released by the health ministry came under particular scrutiny following a blast at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on 17 October. Initial reports suggested that more than 500 people had been killed.

The ministry later said that 471 people had been killed, while US intelligence agencies assessed the true number of fatalities to be on the low end of 100 to 300 people.

“There’s a big difference between a rapid estimate versus the numbers that come out of administrative data and are compiled over time through hospitals and morgues,” Mr Root says.

“When a number comes out quickly on social media or something like that, that is not something that we immediately take as factual.”

The real number could be higher

Mr Root told Sky News that the numbers reported by the ministry seemed plausible given Gaza’s high population density and the scale of destruction visible in satellite imagery.

Sky News has also looked at the number of deaths among UN staff, which Mr Root says serves as a “good gut check” on the figures.

The UN says that 70 of its staff in Gaza have been killed, approximately 0.56% of the total.

That’s slightly higher than the death rate for all Gaza residents reported by the ministry of health, which stands at 0.41%.

Root said that it is not a perfect comparison, but that it corroborates the scale of deaths reported by the ministry of health.

“In fact, as people go through damaged buildings, we can expect maybe those numbers will increase,” he added.

“They might actually be higher than the numbers that are currently coming out.”


The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

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Trump criticises Putin after potentially ‘historic’ meeting with Zelenskyy before Pope’s funeral

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Trump criticises Putin after potentially 'historic' meeting with Zelenskyy before Pope's funeral

Donald Trump has criticised Vladimir Putin and suggested a shift in his stance towards the Russian president after a meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy before the Pope’s funeral.

The Ukrainian president said the one-on-one talks could prove to be “historic” after pictures showed him sitting opposite Mr Trump, around two feet apart, in the large marble hall inside St Peter’s Basilica.

The US president said he doubted his Russian counterpart’s willingness to end the war after leaving Rome after the funeral of Pope Francis at the Vatican.

Follow live updates: 200,000 mourn at Vatican

In a post on his Truth Social platform, he said “there was no reason” for the Russian president “to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days”.

The two leaders held talks before attending the Pope's funeral
Image:
The two leaders held talks before attending the Pope’s funeral

He added: “It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘Banking’ or ‘Secondary Sanctions?’ Too many people are dying!!!”

The meeting between the US and Ukrainian leaders was their first face-to-face encounter since a very public row in the Oval Office in February.

Mr Zelenskyy said he had a good meeting with Mr Trump in which they talked about the defence of the Ukrainian people, a full and unconditional ceasefire, and a durable and lasting peace that would prevent the war restarting.

Other images released by the Ukrainian president’s office show Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron were present for part of the talks, which were described as “positive” by the French presidency.

Mr Zelenskyy‘s spokesman said the meeting lasted for around 15 minutes and he and Mr Trump had agreed to hold further discussions later on Saturday.

The world leaders share a moment before the service
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The world leaders shared a moment before the service

Trump and Zelenskyy meet in the Basilica
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Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet in the Basilica

But the US president left Rome for Washington on Air Force One soon after the funeral without any other talks having taken place.

The Ukrainian president’s office said there was no second meeting in Rome because of the tight schedule of both leaders, although he had separate discussions with Mr Starmer and Mr Macron.

The French president said in a post on X “Ukraine is ready for an unconditional ceasefire” and that a so-called coalition of the willing, led by the UK and France, would continue working to achieve a lasting peace.

There was applause from some of the other world leaders in attendance at the Vatican when Mr Zelenskyy walked out of St Peter’s Basilica after stopping in front of the pontiff’s coffin to pay his respects.

U.S President Donald Trump attends the funeral Mass of Pope Francis, at the Vatican, April 26, 2025. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
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Donald Trump and the Ukrainian president met for the first time since their Oval Office row. Pic: Reuters

Sir Tony Brenton, the former British ambassador to Russia, said the event presents diplomatic opportunities, including the “biggest possible meeting” between Mr Trump and the Ukrainian leader.

He told Sky News it could mark “an important step” in starting the peace process between Russia and Ukraine.

Professor Father Francesco Giordano told Sky News the meeting is being called “Pope Francis’s miracle” by members of the clergy, adding: “There’s so many things that happened today – it was just overwhelming.”

The bilateral meeting comes after Mr Trump’s peace negotiator Steve Witkoff held talks with Mr Putin at the Kremlin.

They discussed “the possibility of resuming direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine”, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said.

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Russia and Ukraine have not held direct talks since the early weeks of the war, which began in February 2022.

Mr Trump has claimed a deal to end the war is “very close” and has urged Mr Zelenskyy to “get it done” in a post on his Truth Social platform.

He has previously warned both sides his administration would walk away from its efforts to achieve a peace if the two sides do not agree a deal soon.

Meanwhile, the Polish armed forces said a Russian military helicopter violated its airspace over the Baltic Sea on Friday evening.

“The nature of the incident indicates that Russia is testing the readiness of our air defence systems,” they said in a post on X.

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What we learn from remarkable photos of Trump-Zelenskyy meeting

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What we learn from remarkable photos of Trump-Zelenskyy meeting

On an extraordinary day, remarkable pictures on the margins that capture what may be a turning point for the world.

In a corner of St Peter’s Basilica before the funeral of Pope Francis, the leaders of America and Ukraine sit facing each other in two solitary chairs.

They look like confessor and sinner except we cannot tell which one is which.

Leaning forward hands together in their laps, Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy stare at each other in one photo.

In another, the Ukrainian president seems to be remonstrating with the US president. This is their first encounter since their infamous bust-up in the Oval Office.

The two leaders held talks before attending the Pope's funeral
Image:
The two leaders held talks before attending the Pope’s funeral

Other pictures show the moment their French and British counterparts introduced the two men. There is a palpable sense of nervousness in the way the leaders engage.

We do not know what the two presidents said in their brief meeting.

But in the mind of the Ukrainian leader will be the knowledge President Trump has this week said America will reward Russia for its unprovoked brutal invasion of his country, under any peace deal.

Mr Trump has presented Ukraine and Russia with a proposal and ultimatum so one-sided it could have been written in the Kremlin.

Kyiv must surrender the land Russia has taken by force, Crimea forever, the rest at least for now. And it must submit to an act of extortion, a proposed deal that would hand over half its mineral wealth effectively to America.

The world leaders share a moment before the service
Image:
The world leaders shared a moment before the service

Afterwards, Zelenskyy said it had been a good meeting that could turn out to be historic “if we reach results together”.

They had talked, he said, about the defence of Ukraine, a full and unconditional ceasefire and a durable and lasting peace that will prevent a war restarting.

The Trump peace proposal includes only unspecified security guarantees for Ukraine from countries that do not include the US. It rules out any membership of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s allies are watching closely to see if Mr Trump will apply any pressure on Vladimir Putin, let alone punish him for recent bloody attacks on Ukraine.

Or will he simply walk away if the proposal fails, blaming Ukrainian intransigence, however outrageously, before moving onto a rapprochement with Moscow.

If he does, America’s role as guarantor of international security will be seen effectively as over.

This could be the week we see the world order as we have known it since the end of the Second World War buried, as well as a pope.

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Pope Francis funeral: 200,000 people bidding farewell to pontiff who had ‘open heart towards everyone’

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Pope Francis funeral: 200,000 people bidding farewell to pontiff who had 'open heart towards everyone'

Tens of thousands of people have packed St Peter’s Square as the funeral of Pope Francis begins.

Royals, world leaders and cardinals joined scores of worshippers at the Vatican, as mourning of the 266th pontiff transcended wealth and social class.

In keeping with Francis’s life as a breaker of tradition, many of the more elaborate and expensive rituals customary for the burial of popes have been foregone in favour of simpler options.

Around 200,000 people are attending the funeral, with around 50,000 packing out St Peter’s Square.

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Pope’s coffin carried out as funeral begins

Follow live: Pope Francis funeral service latest updates

His body had been lying in state since his death aged 88 on Easter Monday, spending the last few days in St Peter’s Basilica to allow mourners to pay their respects.

The Vatican – where the funeral service is taking place – and Rome – where Francis will be laid to rest – are under heavy security, with a no-fly zone in place overhead.

The coffin of Pope Francis is carried during the funeral Mass of Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, April 26, 2025. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
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The coffin of Pope Francis is borne aloft by pallbearers. Pic: Reuters

Members of the clergy sit, ahead of the funeral Mass of Pope Francis, at the Vatican, April 26, 2025. REUTERS/Yara Nardi
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Members of the clergy gathered to say farewell to their pontiff. Pic: Reuters

President Donald Trump and Joe Biden, along with Sir Keir Starmer, President Emmanuel Macron and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, headline a huge selection of global leaders and dignitaries.

Read more:
Pope Francis’s funeral – what is happening and when
Full order of service for Pope’s funeral

Francis’s coffin has been taken out into St Peter’s Square where 220 cardinals and 750 bishops and priests are sitting in rows, waiting to say goodbye to the Bishop of Rome.

A series of readings and prayers are being read before the 50,000 faithful gathered before the basilica, and the coffin will be sprinkled with holy water and incense.

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Singing rings out at the Vatican

Members of the clergy attend the funeral Mass of Pope Francis, in Saint Peter's Square, at the Vatican, April 26, 2025. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
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Members of the clergy stand in St Peter’s Square. Pic: Reuters

It began with Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re reading the Penitential Act – a way for the faithful to confess their sinfulness.

This was followed by the Liturgy of the Word, a part in Catholic mass where faithful gather to hear and reflect on the word of God.

Cardinal Re then delivered the homily, speaking about Pope Francis’ life and service to God.

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Applause breaks out as Zelenskyy arrives

Cardinal
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Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re read the homily

The cardinal praised the pontiff as someone who “touched the minds and hearts of people” who was “attentive to the signs of the times”.

He added: “Despite his frailty and suffering towards the end, Pope Francis chose to follow this path of self-giving until the last day of his earthly life.”

He said Francis “was a pope among the people, with an open heart towards everyone”.

A view of St Peter's Square during the funeral of Pope Francis, at the Vatican, Saturday, April 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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Tens of thousands pack St Peter’s Square for the funeral. Pic: AP

Clergy during the funeral of Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Saturday, April 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
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Clergy seated during the funeral. Pic: AP

At the end of the mass, the choir will sing in Latin: “May the angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs come and welcome you and take you into the holy city, the new and eternal Jerusalem.”

After the service, Pope Francis’s body will be taken in procession through the streets of Rome to his final resting place at his favourite church, the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

People react as they wait outside the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major (Santa Maria Maggiore), ahead of the funeral of Pope Francis, in Rome, Italy, April 26, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
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Worshippers outside the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Pic: Reuters

He will be ushered into the basilica – dedicated to the Virgin Mary – by prisoners and migrants, a last reflection of his priorities as pope.

In a break with tradition, the Pope outlined in his will his request to be buried “in the ground, without particular ornamentation” but simply with the inscription “Franciscus”.

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