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Fact check: How many Palestinian civilians were killed in Gaza and the West Bank in 2025 according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health and UN OCHA?
Executive Summary
The available official tallies from the Palestinian Ministry of Health and UN OCHA present different but partly overlapping snapshots for 2025: the Gaza Ministry reports cumulative fatalities in Gaza in the tens of thousands through October 2025, while UN OCHA’s West Bank figures for 2025 report around 183–198 Palestinian deaths; combining these sources produces a clear separation between Gaza’s wartime toll and West Bank fatalities recorded in 2025. Key differences arise from scope (Gaza vs West Bank vs cumulative since October 2023), reporting dates, and what each dataset counts as a “civilian” or “Palestinian death,” so any single aggregated number depends on which source and cutoff date are used [1] [2] [3].
1. What the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza is claiming and why it matters
The Gaza Ministry of Health’s reporting focuses on cumulative fatalities in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023, and the figures cited in the provided material show 67,075 fatalities and 169,430 injuries as of 3 October 2025, a figure the Ministry frames as a direct and indirect death toll of the war and emphasizes its scale relative to Gaza’s pre-war population (more than 10%). The Ministry’s count is repeatedly used in media and humanitarian conversations because it aggregates deaths occurring over the entirety of the Gaza war period; however, it does not disaggregate by combatant status in the materials provided here and therefore is presented as total fatalities rather than strictly “civilian” deaths [1]. The Ministry’s emphasis on cumulative totals and the humanitarian frame explains why its numbers are often cited in discussions of overall human cost and reconstruction needs [1].
2. What UN OCHA reports for the West Bank in 2025 and the internal variations
UN OCHA reporting in the provided extracts focuses on the West Bank for the 2025 calendar year and offers more granular period-by-period updates: one UN OCHA item reports 183 Palestinian deaths and 2,697 injuries in the West Bank in 2025 as of a late-October reporting window, while a complementary humanitarian situation document and OCHA‑generated update points to 198 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the beginning of 2025 in another update and highlights locality-level detail such as 65 deaths in Jenin governorate [3] [2]. These OCHA figures are presented as 2025-year-to-date counts and reflect monitoring of incidents, notifications from medical services, and field verification; they are narrower in geographic and temporal scope than Gaza Ministry totals and aim to separate West Bank violence trends from the Gaza war ledger [3] [2].
3. Reconciling Gaza and West Bank counts: different clocks, different questions
The most important reason figures differ is that the Gaza Ministry’s numbers are cumulative wartime fatalities in Gaza, whereas UN OCHA’s West Bank reporting is year‑to‑date 2025 fatalities in the West Bank. Documents cited place Gaza’s toll in the tens of thousands with specific snapshots (65,419 fatalities as of late September 2025 and 67,075 as of 3 October 2025 in separate reports), while the West Bank figure for 2025 is in the low hundreds (roughly 183–198 deaths) depending on the OCHA update used. Because one source covers multi‑year accumulation in a war zone and the other tracks a single calendar year in a different territory, combining them requires accepting both scopes — doing so yields a composite picture of Gaza’s very large cumulative losses plus roughly 183–198 West Bank deaths in 2025 rather than a single unified “2025 Palestinian civilian deaths” statistic [3] [4] [2].
4. Sources of discrepancy: definitions, time cutoffs, and reporting channels
Discrepancies come from differences in definitions (who is counted as civilian versus combatant), reporting cutoffs, and institutional roles. The Gaza Ministry reports total deaths in Gaza since October 2023 without consistently categorizing combatant status in the provided excerpts, while OCHA’s West Bank tallies are explicit year-to-date civilian harm monitoring that relies on field verification and incident-level documentation. Dates matter: OCHA’s West Bank totals are tied to reporting through April and October windows in the provided items, and the Gaza Ministry numbers appear in snapshots around late September and early October 2025, so small numeric differences reflect different update dates as well as post-ceasefire body recoveries mentioned elsewhere [5] [1] [4]. Institutional agendas and data collection constraints also shape presentation: ministries and UN agencies emphasize different humanitarian concerns and verification standards [1] [3].
5. Bottom line answer and how to cite these numbers responsibly
If asked to state the numbers from the two institutions as presented in the materials here: cite the Gaza Ministry of Health’s cumulative Gaza toll — 67,075 killed and 169,430 injured as of 3 October 2025 — and cite UN OCHA’s West Bank count for 2025 — approximately 183–198 Palestinians killed in the West Bank in 2025 depending on the specific OCHA update used. Present these as two separate figures with their scopes clearly labeled rather than forcing a single aggregated “2025 Palestinian civilian deaths” figure, because doing otherwise conflates cumulative wartime Gaza fatalities with West Bank year‑to‑date counts and obscures definitional and temporal differences [1] [2].