Casualties of the Israel–Hamas war

Civilians


The Gaza Strip suffered significant civilian casualties from Israeli bombardment.

On 3 November, at least 10 cemetery workers were killed by an Israeli airstrike while working at a graveyard in Beit Lahia. On 4 November, an unnamed Israeli official claimed that around 20,000 people had been killed in Gaza, "most of them terrorists." On 14 November, two volleyball players, Hassan Zuaiter and Ibrahim Qusaya, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Jabalia refugee camp. As of 1 December, 102 UNRWA employees in Gaza had been killed in Israeli airstrikes. On 29 December, UNRWA reported 308 people had been killed in UNRWA shelters. Euro-Med Monitor reported that the IDF was taking and holding Palestinian bodies from Gaza, calling for an international investigation on organ theft suspicions. The Monitor further stated that Israel had systematically killed hundreds of tech specialists, including "programmers, information technology experts, and computer engineering analysts". In March 2024, al-Jazeera's news blog reported that Israeli forces conducted a pattern of killing entire families by targeting the homes they were sheltering in.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 50 people were killed by Israeli strikes on Jabalia on October 31 and November 1. Significant civilian casualties were reported following the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion, the Jabalia camp airstrike on 31 October, and the Fakhoora school airstrike on November 4. Other mass casualty events included the Church of Saint Porphyrius airstrike and the al-Shati refugee camp airstrike, as well as numerous attacks on refugee camps, schools, and healthcare facilities.

As of 13 May 2024, the U.N. has reported that the 35,000 who have died in the conflict includes 7,797 minors, 4,959 women and 1,924 elderly with confirmed identities. 52% of those with confirmed identities are women and minors, and 40% are men; the U.N. does not differentiate between combatant and civilian deaths. By late-June 2024, a Palestinian NGO reported that as many as 10,000 Palestinians had been disabled by injuries related to the war.

Children
On 25 October, Qatar's Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani noted the death toll of children in Gaza had already exceeded the total number killed in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The total civilian death toll would surpass Ukraine's total of 9,614, as of 10 September 2023, including around 600 children, some days later, but in a fraction of the Ukraine invasion's duration. In a statement, UNICEF regional director Adele Khodr stated Gaza's child death toll was a "growing stain on our collective conscience". On October 28, the number of families who had been killed entirely had risen to 825. On 30 October, Save the Children reported more children had died in three weeks in Gaza than in the entire sum of conflicts around the world in the past four years. UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini briefed the UN Security Council, sharing Save the Children's analysis. The death of Hind Rajab drew significant media coverage following the release of her emergency call and her subsequent disappearance for twelve days. On 29 February 2024, Gaza's Ministry of Health reported that 44% (i.e. over 13,000) of the fatalities were children. This disproportionate amount is mainly a result of the strip’s very young population, of which 40% are below 14 years of age.

On May 8, the UN officially revised previous numbers regarding the breakdown of casualties following more formal investigations, the total number killed remaining the same. Only considering identifiable casualties, the proportion of children killed in Gaza was reported as 31.6% or 7797 identified children casualties out of 24 686 identified bodies.

Civilian to military ratio
The Gaza Ministry of Health casualty numbers do not provide the proportion of casualties who are civilian; as a result, varying estimates have been given by analysts. A study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in The Lancet covering the period 7–26 October estimated 68.1% of casualties were children, women or elders and therefore likely non-combatants, while an analysis published in December in Ha'aretz by Israeli sociologist Yagil Levy estimated at least 61% of the casualties were in this category. Both studies were based on figures from Gaza's Ministry of Health. Considering only women, children and elderly as civilians (i.e. classifying all adult men as combatants) gives a conservative figure for civilians, although the true proportion of civilians is likely higher. In early December, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor estimated that 90% of the casualties were civilians. In December, Israel's military said it estimated two out of three (66%) of those killed to be civilians.

Even the conservative figure of 61 percent is higher than the average civilian death rate in all world conflicts "from the Second World War to the 1990s", according to Yigal Levy. The number of casualties is higher than in any conflict in Gaza's recent history, with Neta Crawford of the Costs of War Project at Brown University stating, "This is, in the 21st century, a significant and out-of-the-norm level of destruction". On 31 December, Al Jazeera stated 2023 was the deadliest year for Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba.

In early December 2023, an Israeli official claimed Israel had killed 5,000 militants, but provided no evidence to support the claim. On December 29, the IDF said it had killed 8,000 Hamas fighters. On 30 December 2023, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor estimated 2,353 militant deaths (based 30,034 total and 27,681 civilian deaths). On 19 February 2024, one Hamas official told Reuters 6,000 of its militants had been killed, but a second Hamas official denied this figure in an interview with BBC. Hamas also put out an official statement denying the 6,000 figure. The same day, the IDF claimed it had killed 12,000 militants up to that point. The IDF did not confirm that number to the BBC, but in two separate responses, said the figure is "approximately 10,000" and "more than 10,000", with the Israeli embassy in London giving a similar figure. On 7 April, the IDF said that more than 13,000 operative of Hamas and its allies had been killed by Israel in Gaza in the fighting (although an IDF press release gave 12,000+), in addition to the 1,000 killed on 7 October. The IDF said these deaths included five Hamas brigade commanders or equivalent, 20 battalion commanders, and over 100 company commanders or equivalent.

Sources have doubted the Israeli figures by questioning the IDF's ability to distinguish civilians from casualties (for example, the IDF mistakenly identified three Israeli civilians as Palestinian militants). Many observers believe Israel simply treats all adult male casualties as militants. Other observers argue that Israel could be arriving at inflated figures of militant deaths by including all civil servants as militants.

BBC Verify repeatedly asked IDF for its methodology on counting militant deaths, but the IDF never responded. BBC Verify attempted to count militant deaths by compiling all announcements of militant deaths on the IDF's official telegram channel; it found the IDF had made 160 such announcements, summing up to 714 total militant deaths in the Gaza Strip (as of 29 February). BBC Verify also viewed all 280 videos posted on the IDF's YouTube channel of Gaza operations, and found that only one of those videos actually showed dead bodies of Palestinian militants.

An analysis by Zoran Kusovac in Al-Jazeera pointed out that IDF's own numbers imply 62 Hamas fighters killed for every Israeli soldier killed in Gaza operations. Kusovac argued that if only half the militants were killed in combat, a constant loss exchange ratio of 31:1 over many months would be so demoralizing that Hamas fighters would rout, yet as Hamas continues to fight, its losses must be smaller than claimed.

In late April 2024 Khalil al-Hayya, a top Hamas official, said no more than 20% of Hamas fighters has been killed.

Impacts


On 13 October, the Palestinian Ministry of Health noted 20 surnames had been removed from Gaza's civil registry, meaning every single person in that entire family had been killed. The New York Times stated, "Family trees have been dismembered, and whole branches obliterated." An Associated Press investigation found 60 Palestinian families where at least 25 people were killed between October and December 2023, sometimes across four generations.

On 16 October, UNRWA stated there were so many deaths in Gaza that there were no longer enough body bags. Because the morgues were so overcrowded, bodies were kept in ice cream trucks. On 11 November, Monir al-Bashr, the director of the Health Ministry of Gaza, stated graves were being dug by hand. On 12 November, Mai al-Kaila noted staff at Al-Shifa were unable to bury 100 decomposing bodies. On 14 November, the Palestinian Red Crescent noted it was unable to rescue the wounded and injured beneath the rubble, noting, "Those injured are left there in agony to suffer and die with no response to their calls of help."

At the end of January 2024 BBC reported that based on a recent report from the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor more then 24,000 children have lost one or both parents due to the war. The United Nations agency UNICEF have estimated that there are about 19,000 orphaned or unaccompanied children in Gaza, with some being dug out of rubble or found throughout the strip.

Famine
The Israel-Hamas War has led to imminent famine conditions in the Gaza Strip, resulting from Israeli airstrikes and the ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip by Israel, which includes restrictions on humanitarian aid. 2.2 million people in Gaza are now experiencing food insecurity at emergency level.

Airstrikes have destroyed food infrastructure, such as bakeries, mills, and food stores, and there is a widespread scarcity of essential supplies due to the blockade of aid. This has caused starvation for more than half a million Gazans and is part of a broader humanitarian crisis in the Strip. It is the “highest number of people facing catastrophic hunger” ever recorded on the IPC scale, and is widely expected to be the most intense man-made famine since the Second World War.

The leader of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) expressed that the residents of Gaza are perishing due to starvation. The alarming pace at which this crisis of hunger and malnutrition, caused by humans, is spreading in Gaza is deeply concerning. Half of Gaza's entire population is currently facing catastrophic conditions and is on the brink of famine, a situation that has never been seen before. The World Food Program reports that approximately 1.1 million individuals in Gaza are grappling with severe hunger.

Death toll
On 25 October, US President Joe Biden stated he had "no confidence" in the death totals reported by the Gaza Health Ministry. In response, Human Rights Watch stated that after three decades working in Gaza and conducting its own investigation, it considers Gaza Health Ministry's totals to be reliable. Matthew Miller made a similar claim to Biden's, despite the fact that the US Department of State cites the Gaza Health Ministry's death tolls in its own internal reports. On 26 October, the Gaza Health Ministry responded by releasing a 212-page document of 6,747 individual names and ID numbers, as well as 281 unidentified fatalities. The US State Department Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs told a Congressional hearing on 9 November that the death toll was "very high, frankly, and it could be that they're even higher than are being cited." (The Gaza Health Ministry numbers do not distinguish deaths among combatants and noncombatants, nor do they take into account cause of death, as explained above; i.e., the number is a simple tally of total Gazan deaths since 7 October 2023.)

Every death registered in Gaza is the result of a verified change in the population registry approved by the Government of Israel. The Israeli government notes that its "Population Registry Office works to update population registry files located on the Israeli side to match the files that are held" in the West Bank and Gaza. On 26 October, the United Nations humanitarian office added they use the Gaza Ministry of Health's death totals because they are "clearly sourced" and their estimates have been described as trustworthy by the World Health Organization's (WHO) regional emergency director Richard Brennan. On 6 December, a peer-reviewed article by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health scholars in The Lancet concluded the Gaza Ministry of Health's death tolls were accurate.

Around mid-November, the Gaza Health Ministry had begun to lose count of deaths stating that it struggled to update casualty tolls as a result of blackouts, high death tolls, and the collapse of the healthcare system. On January 6, 2024, the Gaza Health Ministry requested that civilians register their dead online, as the healthcare system collapse had resulted in the ministry being unable to maintain a regularly updated death toll. In February 2024, a joint study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins University found the war continuing at status quo would result in between 58,260 and 74,290 excess deaths by 6 August.

As of 29 February, the Gaza Health Ministry stated that its daily tallies now rely upon "a combination of accurate death counts from hospitals that are still partially operating, and on estimates from media reports to assess deaths in the north of Gaza", but did not "cite or say which sources those are." On 31 March, it stated that 15,070 fatalities (45.8% of the then total) had been compiled via "reliable media sources" instead of direct reporting. The Ministry further clarified in reports made on 1 April and 4 April that it had "incomplete data" for 12,263 (later reduced 11,371) of its 33,091 reported fatalities.

Journalists in Gaza
Numerous Palestinian journalists in Gaza were killed by Israeli attacks while in the line of duty. Ibrahim Mohammad Lafi, a photographer for Ain Media, was fatally shot during the attack on the Erez crossing on 7 October, while Mohammad Jarghoun, a reporter with Smart Media, was killed east of Rafah on the same day. Freelance journalist Mohammad el-Salhi was also shot dead on the border east of Bureij refugee camp on 7 October. On 9 October, Saeed al-Taweel, editor-in-chief of Al-Khamsa News website, Mohammed Subh and Hisham Alnwajha were killed by an airstrike while filming an anticipated attack in Gaza City.

On 10 October, two additional journalists were reported missing, and another was injured by shrapnel. The homes of two journalists were destroyed by shelling, and the offices of four media outlets were destroyed by airstrikes. On 22 October, Rushdi Sarraj was killed by an Israeli airstrike on his home. On 24 October, reporter Wael Al-Dahdouh lost his entire family due to an Israeli airstrike. On 27 October, the IDF told Reuters and Agence France Presse it would not guarantee their journalists' safety in Gaza. On 30 October, Al Jazeera correspondent Youmna El-Sayed received a threat from Israeli forces, leading the spokesperson for the UN-Secretary General to remark on the "immense courage" of journalists in Gaza. On 2 November, Mohammed Abu Hatab and 10 members of his family were killed by an Israeli airstrike.

On 19 October, the Committee to Protect Journalists stated 21 journalists were confirmed dead, eight were injured, and three were missing or detained. A 29 October report by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said that Israel had targeted journalists who were clearly identifiable as press, in two 13 October missile strikes that killed a reporter and injured four. On 31 October, RSF said that 34 journalists had been killed to date in the conflict, including 12 "in connection with their work", ten of whom were killed in Israel's attack on Gaza; they described the first two weeks of the conflict as the deadliest start of a war of the 21st century for journalists. On 7 November, an Israeli airstrike killed journalist Mohammad Abu Hasira and 42 of his family members. On 23 November, photojournalist Mohammad Moin Ayyash and his family were killed by an Israeli airstrike.

Investigations
On 1 November, Reporters Without Borders asked the International Criminal Court to begin a priority war crimes investigation into the killing of nine journalists. RSF noted 41 journalists had been killed during the first month of the conflict, stating multiple journalists had been killed by Israel in their homes. Israel maintains records of the place and residence of every person in Gaza. RSF stated Israel had used targeted strikes to kill journalists in Gaza.

Health and aid workers


On 11 October, UNRWA reported that nine of their workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike, and that its headquarters were being targeted by Israel. 11 members of UNRWA and five members of the Red Cross and Red Crescent were killed in Gaza since the start of the fighting. MSF said it had counted 16 medical personnel killed since 7 October. MSF said a nurse and an ambulance driver were killed, and several others injured in Israeli strikes on the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis and the Indonesia Hospital in Gaza City. The Indonesian Medical Emergency Rescue Committee (MER-C) confirmed a staff member was killed near an operational MER-C vehicle. On 22 October, UNRWA stated that 29 staff members had been killed in Gaza. On 30 October, the Palestinian Ministry of Health stated 120 medical staff had been killed in Gaza. On 10 November, the UN reported more than 100 employees had been killed by Israel. On 11 November, UNRWA rejected Israel's claims that UN workers were undercover Hamas agents. On 12 November, the UN noted three nurses at al-Shifa hospital were killed during the Siege of Gaza City. More UN workers were killed in Gaza than in any other conflict in world history. According to The Healthcare Workers Watch – Palestine, more than 400 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza.

Doctors Without Borders stated in a social media post on 22 December that a Palestinian doctor who had written, "We did what we could. Remember us", had been killed in an airstrike. On 24 December, a UNDP worker was killed in an airstrike, along with 70 members of his family.

Israel
Israel's total casualty count is 1,410 killed. Of these, 1,139 were killed in the October 7 attacks.

On 1 December, around 1,332 Israelis had been killed since 7 October (inclusive), including 395 IDF soldiers, 10 Shin Bet agents and 59 police officers, and at least 1,271 have been wounded.

October 7 attacks
The latest figure on the number of deaths in the October 7 attacks is 1,139: 695 Israeli civilians, 71 foreign nationals, and 373 security forces. This data was published in December 2023, using social security data. There are additionally five people classed as missing, including four Israelis. The deaths included 36 children, of whom 20 were under 15 years old and the youngest was a 10-month-old baby.

Initially, Israel had reported 1,400 deaths from the attacks, but on November 10 it revised its casualty count to 1,200 after realizing that bodies that were so badly burnt were not Israeli but rather those of Hamas fighters. This included 859 civilians, 283 soldiers, 57 policemen, and 10 Shin Bet members.

The casualties include approximately 70 dead or missing Arab-Israeli citizens, many of whom are Negev Bedouin. 14 Israeli children under 10 and 36 adolescents aged between 10 and 19 were initially believed to have been killed in the 7 October attack.

On 7 October, there were massacres at more than nine kibbutzim where civilians resided and at an outdoor dance music festival. Over 260 attendees were killed at the psychedelic trance open-air "Supernova Sukkot Gathering" music festival near the Re'im kibbutz. It became the deadliest concert attack ever and the worst Israeli civilian massacre in its history. Over 100 civilians were killed in the Be'eri massacre, including children. Many of the kibbutz residents among the dead or missing were peace activists, such as the 74-year-old Vivian Silver, a former board member of the human rights organisation B'Tselem. At least 50–100 people have been reported killed in the Kfar Aza massacre, with the total death toll unknown. Filmmaker Yahav Winner was killed in Kfar Aza. Many civilians were also killed in the Nahal Oz massacre. Nine people were fatally shot at a bus shelter in Sderot, and at least fourteen were killed by gunfire and grenades at a roadside bomb shelter near Re'im. At least four people were reported killed in Kuseife. At least 400 casualties were reported in Ashkelon, while 280 others were reported in Beer Sheva, 60 of whom were in serious condition. In the north, injuries from rocket attacks were reported in Tel Aviv.

Former Hapoel Tel Aviv F.C. striker Lior Asulin was among those killed in the Re'im music festival massacre. The head of the Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Council, Ofir Libstein, was killed in an exchange of fire with the militants. The police commander of Rahat, Jayar Davidov, was also killed. Izhar Peled, a police officer, was killed in Kfar Aza. The IDF confirmed that 258 of its soldiers had been killed. Among their confirmed dead were Colonel Yonatan Steinberg, the commander of the Nahal Brigade, who was killed near Kerem Shalom; Colonel Roi Levy, commander of the Multidimensional "Ghost" unit, who was killed near Kibbutz Re'im; and Lieutenant Colonel Eli Ginsberg, commander of the LOTAR Counter-terrorism Unit School. The Druze deputy commander of the 300th "Baram" Regional Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Alim Abdallah, was killed in action along with two other soldiers while responding to an infiltration from southern Lebanon on 9 October. Lieutenant-Colonel Salman Habaka was killed in Jabalia on 2 November 2023. Israeli peace activist Hayim Katsman was killed in Holit.

Invasion of Gaza
It was reported in April 2024 that since October 27, 2023, when Israel invaded the Gaza Strip, 260 Israeli soldiers had been killed, mainly during ground operations. On June 15, 2024 it was reported that eight IDF troops were killed while returning from an overnight operation near the Tal al-Sultan refugee camp in Rafah during the ongoing offensive. Per a statement, Hamas had fired a rocket at any Israeli army bulldozer and fired a second one as reinforcements arrived, reportedly causing the casualties.

The IDF said in July 2024 that a large number of tanks had been incapacitated in the course of the war, limiting the number of tanks available for training exercises.

Journalists in Israel
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, two Israeli journalists, Roee Idan and Yaniv Zohar, have been killed.

Migrant workers
At least 50 migrant workers, primarily from Thailand and Nepal, were killed during Hamas' attack on 7 October and around 100,000 migrant workers are trapped in Israel during the conflict due to debt from large fees they had to pay to recruitment agencies to obtain the jobs.

West Bank
OCHA reported that Israel killed 370 Palestinians in the West Bank between October 7, 2023 and January 29, 2024, including 94 children. 97% of these were killed by Israeli security forces and the remainder by Israeli settlers.

Several thousand Gazan workers were in Israel at the time when the conflict started. As of 16 October some of them were detained at a "holding facility" in the West Bank while others sought refuge in the Palestinian communities of the West Bank. The Minister of Labor for the Palestinian Authority estimated 4,500 workers are unaccounted for while Israeli media outlet N12 reported 4,000 Gazans were in Israeli holding facilities. The Palestinian Prisoners Society said that Israeli forces had arrested over 1,450 West Bank Palestinians since 7 October. On 29 October, thirty Israeli human rights organizations addressed settler violence in the West Bank, asking the international community to "act urgently" to end it. On 30 October, the German government called on Israel to protect Palestinians in the West Bank. On 31 October, EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell "firmly condemned" settler attacks in the West Bank. Linda Thomas-Greenfield stated the United States was "deeply concerned," and condemned the killings of Palestinians in the West Bank.

Lebanon
During clashes along the Israel–Lebanon border, an Israeli artillery strike on 13 October killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and injured six other journalists from Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Al Jazeera.

These clashes are still ongoing, and as of 1 December, they have resulted in 105 deaths, including 17 civilians and 85 militants.

By early April, the IDF said it had killed more than 330 "terror operatives" in Lebanon, mostly members of Hezbollah, including 30 Hezbollah commanders.

Foreign and dual-national casualties
As of 21 January 2024, the The Washington Post reported that persons from 24 countries had been killed or went missing during the conflict.

Table
Foreign casualties include both those killed by Palestinian militants inside Israel, as well as those killed by the IDF inside the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and southern Lebanon.

Further details
The Nepali ambassador to Israel, Kanta Rijal, said at least seven of its nationals in the country were injured in the attack, and that they along with ten others were held captive by Hamas at Kibbutz Alumim. The Nepalese embassy later confirmed that 10 Nepalese students were killed during the attack in the kibbutz. Israeli media also reported that migrant workers from Thailand and the Philippines were also taken captive by Palestinian militants. The Philippine government confirmed that four Filipinos were killed while two others were injured in the attacks, with authorities verifying reports of Filipinos being held captive by Hamas. 26 Filipinos were rescued by Israeli security forces,  while two Filipinos were unaccounted for. At least 28 Thais were killed and 17 were captured by Hamas at Kibbutz Alumim. The reason for Hamas attacking the foreign workers' living quarters was because security guards successfully defended the main kibbutz residential area from invasion so they attacked softer targets. There were no guards stationed at the mostly Asian-inhabited living quarters.

A German-Israeli national, Shani Louk, was killed while attending the Re'im music festival; a video of Palestinians parading her near-naked body in a car was circulated on the internet. Several other German citizens were reported to be among those kidnapped by militants. At least 17 British citizens were reported as dead or missing, including one attendee of the music festival. 18 Ukrainians, a Cambodian student, and a Chilean woman were confirmed to have been killed by Hamas. 13 French citizens were killed, with an additional 17 missing, including four children.

At least 31 Americans were killed during the attacks and 13 others were missing. Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Affairs reported that two Mexican nationals were presumed to have been taken hostage by Hamas. One Brazilian national was reported as injured and three were reported missing. An Indian caregiver was injured by a rocket barrage in Ashkelon. The British embassy confirmed the death of a British national who attended the music festival.

Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares said two Spaniards were attacked without specifying their condition. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani stated that an Italian-Israeli couple went missing in Be'eri. Two Tanzanian students were reported by their embassy to be missing. The Russian Embassy stated that 16 Russian nationals were killed and nine others went missing following the attack. Four Argentinians were reported to have been killed and three were reported missing.

The Canadian government stated that three Canadians were killed, and that two other Canadians were missing. A Paraguayan couple was reported killed, with the government also reporting two nationals missing. An Irish attendee of the music festival was reported missing. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Peru confirmed that a Peruvian-Israeli soldier was killed in action on the front line, while three remained missing. A Colombian couple attending the music festival was reported missing after the attack. The Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that three Austrian-Israeli dual nationals had been captured, and that one of them had later been confirmed dead. South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation confirmed that two citizens, including a dual national, were killed.

In Gaza, a Ukrainian national was confirmed to have been killed.

Hostages in Gaza


248 people were taken hostage during the Israeli attacks, mostly civilians. On 8 October, Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed to be holding at least 30 captives. At least four people were reported taken from Kfar Aza. Videos from Gaza appeared to show captured people, with Gazan residents cheering trucks carrying dead bodies. Israel reported four captives were killed in Be'eri, while Hamas indicated that an IDF airstrike on Gaza on 9 October killed four captives.

Civilians believed to be held captive in Gaza include families, children, festival-goers, peace activists, caregivers, and elders such as 75-year-old historian Alex Dancyg, who has written books on Poland's Jewish community and the Holocaust, was taken from Nir Oz. Also at Nir Oz, six members of the Silberman-Bibas family were caught on video being taken from their home; on 11 October, Hamas released a video showing three of them being let go near the border fence. On 16 October, Hamas released a video of one of its hostages, a 21-year-old French Israeli woman who had sustained injuries to her arm and a scar. On 20 October, Hamas released an American woman and her 17-year-old daughter who were taken while visiting relatives in Nahal Oz. According to a report sent to the International Committee of the Red Cross by the Geneva-based organization Hostage and Missing Families Forum, hostages include people with Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, dementia, autism and psychiatric disorders, who are "in urgent need of treatment and lifesaving medication", and are "prone to immediate mortality [without] essential medications and treatment." The report also expressed concern about untreated injuries induced during the attack.

An open letter published in The Lancet by a group of 1,500 Israeli health-care professionals expressed shock at "the greatest loss of civilian life since the establishment of the state of Israel", and the indiscriminate "barbaric rampage" through "entire villages in the south of Israel", which it termed a "crime against humanity". The letter called on the international medical community to "condemn the savage massacre, to immediately call for guarantees for the safety and health of all those being kept hostage, and to unequivocally call for the immediate and unconditional return of our families and friends who have been cruelly taken hostage".

American-Israeli author Robby Berman set up a fund offering a reward of 1 million Israeli shekels for the release of hostages in Gaza, specifically aimed at encouraging Palestinians to aid in the rescue of Jewish prisoners.

Palestinians imprisoned in Israel
Thousands of Palestinians working in Israel on the eve of the war have gone missing. Human rights groups believe they have subjected to mass arrests by Israel, but Israel has refused to release the names of those whom they are holding. According to testimonies obtained by HaMoked and Al-Jazeera some of these prisoners have been beaten by Israeli soldiers and denied access to contact the Red Cross. Eight of the workers were interviewed by CNN made claims of torture, including being stripped naked, "viciously" beaten, including one account of electrocution. One prisoner reported; “They broke us and beat us with batons and metal sticks… they humiliated us… they have made us starve without food or water,” whilst another claimed "some people died on the way here because they were beaten and subjected to electric shocks." The interviewed workers were eventually returned to Gaza on 4 November. At least six human rights organizations in Israel have filed a petition to Israel's High Court arguing these detentions were "without legal authority and without legal grounds." Amani Sarahneh of Palestinian Prisoners Society and Dror Sadot of B’Tselem both described the issue as systemic, with Sadot stating in response; “We’ve been investigating this for so many years – the military enforcement system works as a whitewash mechanism with almost no indictments,” she said. “So they will say ‘those are the exception, not the rule,’ but if the impunity for soldiers continues – and not just the soldiers but also the policy itself – when no one’s being held accountable, of course, things will just continue,”

Reactions and analysis
Both Israel and Hamas have been accused of committing war crimes. South Africa accused Israel of committing genocide in a case it brought before the International Court of Justice. In a set of preliminary rulings, the court found that the Palestinians rights under the genocide convention were plausibly in danger but did not rule on whether genocide was plausibly happening. In June 2024, a UN Commission of Inquiry found the scale of Israel's killing of Palestinians constituted a crime against humanity. Marwan Bishara, the senior political analyst at Al Jazeera English, argued that Israel's military campaign aimed to "eliminate anything that walks or breathes in Gaza".