Israel’s own intelligence has conceded what much of the world already suspected: its war in Gaza has overwhelmingly killed civilians. According to a leaked military database reported by +972 Magazine, Local Call and The Guardian, just 8,900 of the more than 53,000 Palestinians killed by May were combatants.
That makes at least 83% of the dead non-combatants. If only the confirmed militant deaths are counted, the ratio of civilians rises above 86%.
These numbers resonate strongly and starkly with Action on Armed Violence’s (AOAV) own monitoring of explosive weapon harm in Gaza and the West Bank. Our data, culled from English language media reports, show that since October 7th 2023 more than 48,000 civilians have been killed or injured in Gaza, including over 31,000 deaths. We acknowledge this is an underestimation as many incidents of explosive violence harm never make the news, but when they do we have seen that – on average – each Israeli air strike has killed 10.1 civilians.
That figure far exceeds both previous Gaza campaigns and the global average of 7.4. The leak confirms what AOAV has long observed worldwide: when heavy explosive weapons are used in populated areas, civilians make up the overwhelming majority of the dead. Year in and year out since our monitor began in 2010, the same statisitc emerges.
When explosive weapons are used in towns and cities, 90% of those killed or injured will be civilians. Gaza fits the rule, but on a devastating scale.
Such ratios are grim but terribly predictable. Gaza is one of the most densely packed territories on earth. Almost every strike lands in or near homes, schools, camps, markets or hospitals. Wide-area effect munitions cannot be precise in such settings. Yet Israel has repeatedly claimed a degree of precision it has not delivered. Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a one-to-one ratio; army spokesmen of two civilians for every militant killed.
The new data suggest those statements were not simply mistaken, but misleading.
Such distortions are not unique. Commanders often inflate militant tallies to present a picture of success. Civilians are too easily “promoted to the rank of terrorist after their death,” as one Israeli intelligence officer admitted.
We could have predicted the admirable expose by +972 and others. Globally, 2024 was the deadliest year for civilians since AOAV began recording. We tracked more than 67,000 deaths and injuries from explosive violence, of whom 89% were civilians. Israel’s operations in Gaza accounted for nearly 40% of that toll. In Sudan, Myanmar and Ukraine civilians also bore the brunt, but nowhere matched Gaza for intensity.
Comparative data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Programme suggest only Rwanda, Srebrenica and Mariupol have seen similar civilian death ratios in recent decades.
Some defenders of Israel argue that militants embed themselves among civilians. Others say Hamas inflates the death toll. Yet the leaked Israeli figures undermine those claims. Even allowing for unidentified fighters, the civilian share remains overwhelming. The arithmetic is unavoidable.
The legal implications of all of this cannot be brushed aside. International humanitarian law does not set an “acceptable” casualty ratio; it requires proportionality in each attack. But if each strike kills, on average, ten civilians, legality is difficult to claim. Nor can strategy excuse the cost. After nearly two years of bombardment, Israel admits it has killed only a fraction of Hamas’s military wing. American intelligence even suggests Hamas has recruited as many fighters during the war as Israel has killed.
The civilian carnage has not destroyed the enemy; it has deepened the conflict.
AOAV and other members of the civil society group the International Network on Explosive Weapons (INEW), of which it is a member, have long argued that explosive weapons with wide-area effects should never be used in populated areas. The evidence from Gaza shows why. For each bombardment not only kills civilians in droves but at the same time corrodes the legitimacy of those who authorise it.
Now the wider world must draw lessons. For unless states strengthen and enforce restrictions on the use of such weapons, Gaza’s 83% is and will be repeated elsewhere. Sudan suffers. So does Myanmar. So does Ukraine, under Russian bombs. But Gaza is being armed by the West. We should know better.
Israel’s leaders promised precision; their own intelligence shows indiscriminate slaughter. AOAV’s data has long pointed to the same conclusion: in modern wars fought with bombs, rockets and shells, civilians die in overwhelming numbers.
The latest revelations do not change that reality. They confirm it.
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