The Israel Defense Forces believes that the Hamas-run health ministry’s death toll from the war in the Gaza Strip has been largely accurate, a senior Israeli military official acknowledged on Thursday.

Briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, the official said that the IDF believes the Gaza death count from the two-plus-year war, sparked by Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, is around 70,000. The Gaza health ministry’s current death toll is 71,667, including over 450 killed since the October 2025 ceasefire.

The senior military official said the actual breakdown of the Gaza death toll is still under review, and it is unknown exactly how many of the dead are members of terror groups and how many people died directly as a result of the fighting.

Israel largely rejected death tolls claimed by Hamas’s health ministry during the war, especially following specific incidents in which the terror group announced what Israeli officials called “exaggerated........

© The Times of Israel