Israel-Hamas war: What social media videos and satellite images tell us about the number of dead in Gaza
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 airstrike 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
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
“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 72 of its staff in Gaza have been killed, approximately 0.58% 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.
World
Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to ‘smoke out’ thousands of illegal miners
A body has been recovered from a South African mine after police cut off basic supplies in an effort to force around 4,000 illegal miners to resurface.
The body has emerged from the closed gold mine in the northwest town of Stilfontein a day after South Africa’s government said it would not help the illegal miners.
Around 20 people have surfaced from the mineshaft this week as police wait nearby to arrest all those appearing from underground.
It comes a day after a cabinet minister said the government was trying to “smoke them [the miners] out”.
The move is part of the police’s “Close the Hole” operation, whereby officers cut off supplies of food, water and other basic necessities to get those who have entered illegally to come out.
Local reports suggest the supply routes were cut off at the mine around two months ago, with relatives of the miners seen in the area as the stand-off continues.
Relatives of miners and community members wait at the mine shaft. Pic: AP
A decomposed body was brought up on Thursday, with pathologists on the scene, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.
It comes after South African cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday that the government would not send any help to the illegal miners, known in the country as zama zamas, because they are involved in a criminal act.
“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped; criminals are to be prosecuted. We didn’t send them there,” Ms Ntshavheni said.
An aerial view of a mineshaft. Pic: AP
Senior police and defence officials are expected to visit the area on Friday to “reinforce the government’s commitment to bringing this operation to a safe and lawful conclusion”, according to a media advisory from the police.
In the last few weeks, over 1,000 miners have surfaced at various mines in South Africa’s North West province, where police have cut off supplies.
Many of the miners were reported to be weak, hungry and sickly after going for weeks without basic supplies.
Illegal mining remains common in South Africa’s old gold-mining areas, with miners going into closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits.
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Relatives of miners and community members wait near the mine shaft. Pic: AP
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The illegal miners are often from neighbouring countries, and police say the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ the miners.
Their presence in closed mines has also created problems with nearby communities, which complain that the illegal miners commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape.
Illegal mining groups are known to be heavily armed and disputes between rival groups sometimes result in fatal confrontations.
World
Ukrainian frontline commander warns: ‘The world is scared of Russia and losing is not only our problem’
In the courtyard of a farmhouse now home to soldiers of the Ukrainian army’s 47th mechanised brigade, I’m introduced to a weary-looking unit by their commander Captain Oleksandr “Sasha” Shyrshyn.
We are about 10km from the border with Russia, and beyond it lies the Kursk region Ukraine invaded in the summer – and where this battalion is now fighting.
The 47th is a crack fighting assault unit.
They’ve been brought to this area from the fierce battles in the country’s eastern Donbas region to bolster Ukrainian forces already here.
War latest: Russia ready to carry out ‘massive attack’
The captain known by his men as ‘Genius’
In the summer, Ukraine launched an incursion into Russian territory, in Kursk
Captain Shyrshyn explains that among the many shortages the military has to deal with, the lack of infantry is becoming a critical problem.
Sasha is just 30 years old, but he is worldly-wise. He used to run an organisation helping children in the country’s east before donning his uniform and going to war.
He is famous in Ukraine and is regarded as one of the country’s top field commanders, who isn’t afraid to express his views on the war and how it’s being waged.
His nom de guerre is ‘Genius’, a nickname given to him by his men.
Captain Sasha Shyrshyn and Sky News chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay
‘Don’t worry, it’s not a minefield’
Sasha invited me to see one of the American Bradley fighting vehicles his unit uses.
We walk down a muddy lane before he says it’s best to go cross-country.
“We can go that way, don’t worry it’s not a minefield,” he jokes.
He leads us across a muddy field and into a forest where the vehicle is hidden from Russian surveillance drones that try to hunt both American vehicles and commanders.
Sasha shows me a picture of the house they had been staying in only days before – it was now completely destroyed after a missile strike.
Fortunately, neither he, nor any of his men, were there at the time.
“They target commanders,” he says with a smirk.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
‘The world is scared of Russia’
It takes me a moment or two to realise we are only a few steps away from the Bradley, dug in and well hidden beneath the trees.
The disguised American Bradley vehicle hidden in the forest
Sasha tells me the Bradley is the finest vehicle he has ever used.
A vehicle so good, he says, it’s keeping the Ukrainian army going in the face of Russia’s overwhelming numbers of soldiers.
He explains: “Almost all our work on the battlefield is cooperation infantry with the Bradley. So we use it for evacuations, for moving people from one place to another, as well as for fire-covering.
“This vehicle is very safe and has very good characteristics.”
The American Bradley fighting vehicle that Ukrainian soldiers have found vital in their efforts
Billions of dollars in military aid has been given to Ukraine by the United States, and this vehicle is one of the most valuable assets the US has provided.
Ukraine is running low on men to fight, and the weaponry it has is not enough, especially if it can’t fire long-range missiles into Russia itself – which it is currently not allowed to do.
If President-elect Donald Trump cuts the supply of military aid, the Ukrainians will lose – it’s that simple.
US President-elect Donald Trump has been clear he intends to change his nation’s policy on the war in Ukraine. Pic: Reuters
Sasha says: “We have a lack of weapons, we have a lack of artillery, we have a lack of infantry, and as the world doesn’t care about justice, and they don’t want to finish the war by our win, they are afraid of Russia.
“I’m sorry but they’re scared, they’re scared, and it’s not the right way.”
Like pretty much everyone in Ukraine, Sasha is waiting to see what the US election result will mean for his country.
He is sceptical about a deal with Russia.
“Our enemy only understands the language of power. And you cannot finish the war in 24 hours, or during the year without hard decisions, without a fight, so it’s impossible. It’s just talking without results,” he tells me.
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How Ukrainian units are downing Russia’s drones
Heartbreaking final moments of girl who tried to flee Gaza
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‘Losing will be not only our problem’
These men expect the fierce battles inside Kursk to intensify in the coming days.
Indeed, alongside the main supply route into Kursk, workers are already building new defensive positions – unfurling miles of razor wire and digging bunkers for the Ukrainian army if it finds itself in retreat.
Barbed wire rolled out in the Sumy region ahead of expected fighting
Tank traps in the Sumy region
Sasha and his men are realistic about support fatigue from the outside world but will keep fighting to the last if they have to.
“I understand this is only our problem, it’s only our issue, and we have to fight this battle, like we have to defend ourselves, it’s our responsibility,” Sasha said.
But he points out everyone should realise just how critical this moment in time is.
“If we look at it widely, we have to understand that us losing will be not only our problem, but it will be for all the world.”
Stuart Ramsay reports from northeastern Ukraine with camera operator Toby Nash, and producers Dominique Van Heerden, Azad Safarov, and Nick Davenport.
A weather warning has been issued for parts of Spain, as the country counts the cost of recent flooding.
The orange warnings are in place for parts of southwestern Spain – the area around Seville down towards Gibraltar.
Up to 8cm (3ins) of rain could fall within 12 hours, but the weekend looks much more settled in the country.
The latest warnings come just two weeks after flash flooding in Valencia and other parts of the country killed more than 200 people.
Malaga saw 14.2cm (5.6ins) of rainfall on Wednesday – Spain’s highest of the day – most of which fell in six hours.
All train services were halted in Malaga. Some flights have now resumed after the initial disruption.
Pic: Jamie Marchant
Emergency services in the province have moved 3,000 people from homes at risk of flooding close to the Guadalhorce River in the west of the city.
Jamie Marchant, 29, from Caerphilly in South Wales travelled to Malaga last Wednesday.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
He told Sky News that “debris” had been left behind by the recent rainfall in the region.
“Everyone is pitching in to clean up and some shops are opening as usual,” he added.
Orange warnings for the Valencia region in eastern Spain expired earlier on Thursday.
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The adverse weather could lead to total insured losses of more than €4bn (£3.33bn), according to credit rating agency Morningstar DBRS.
Much of the claims are expected to be covered by the Spanish government’s insurance pool, the agency said, but insurance premiums are likely to increase.
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