How many children died in Gaza in 2025
Executive summary
An exact, single authoritative count of how many children died in Gaza in 2025 cannot be produced from the supplied reporting because different actors publish overlapping but non-identical tallies and no consolidated year-end official total is provided in these sources; available figures place the toll in the late tens of thousands, with Gaza health authorities’ lists and international NGOs citing figures roughly between about 18,000 and more than 20,000 child fatalities during the course of the war that continued through 2025 [1] [2] [3]. These numbers reflect different cut‑offs, methodologies, and whether they count only deaths or deaths plus injuries, and must be understood as estimates reported by local health authorities, UN agencies and humanitarian organizations [1] [4] [2].
1. The clearest single data point available: Gaza’s health list and mid‑year tallies
A widely cited compilation maintained by Gaza’s health authorities — which The Guardian treats as the authoritative local list of named victims — recorded 18,457 people under 18 on its list of war dead as of the end of July 2025, and the underlying list of overall victims ran to some 60,199 names at that time, a dataset explicitly acknowledged and used by multiple outlets [1]. That list is recognized by international entities yet the Guardian cautions it is far from comprehensive because thousands remain buried under rubble or otherwise uncounted, indicating that the 18,457 figure is a substantive but partial snapshot, not a final, uncontested year‑end tally [1].
2. NGO and UN tallies that place the toll higher or use broader categories
Humanitarian organizations issued higher and sometimes differently framed counts through 2025: Save the Children reported that the number of children killed had “surpassed 20,000” after nearly 23 months of war, citing Gaza Government Media Office data and its own observations [2] [3]. UNICEF and partner UN agencies repeatedly issued rolling briefings that combined killed and maimed figures — for example, UNICEF cited more than 15,000 children reportedly killed after nearly 18 months and provided separate statements on spikes in specific periods such as at least 74 children reportedly killed in the first week of January 2025 — demonstrating how NGO messaging sometimes mixes timeframes and categories [4] [5].
3. Why figures diverge: methodology, cut‑offs and the fog of war
Differences stem from methodology — whether numbers are deaths only or deaths plus injuries, whether counts are verified lists of identified names or broader tallies reported by ministries of health, and different temporal cut‑offs such as mid‑year, the end of a ceasefire, or later months — as well as practical obstacles like bodies under rubble, disrupted reporting systems, and restricted humanitarian access that leave many casualties unrecorded [1] [4]. UN agencies repeatedly warned that children continued to die from indirect causes such as hypothermia, malnutrition and lack of medical care during waves of blockade and displacement, and those deaths complicate any neat attribution to a calendar year tally [5] [6].
4. What can responsibly be concluded from the provided reporting
From the supplied sources it is responsible to conclude that the number of children who died in Gaza over the course of 2025 is reported in the high‑thousands to tens of thousands, with locally maintained named lists showing at least 18,457 children dead by the end of July 2025 and major humanitarian groups reporting figures that exceed 20,000 at later points in the year — but no single, universally agreed, final 2025 calendar‑year total is provided in these items to definitively state an exact number [1] [2] [3] [4]. These counts reflect a humanitarian catastrophe repeatedly emphasized by UNICEF, Save the Children, MSF and local authorities, and all warn that actual losses may be higher due to unrecorded deaths and indirect mortality from deprivation [7] [6] [4].
5. The reporting context and competing agendas to note
Local Gaza health authorities and Palestinian ministries are the primary sources for named casualty lists and have an institutional interest in documenting civilian loss; international NGOs and UN agencies focus on protection and advocacy and sometimes combine deaths and injuries to highlight scale, while parties to the conflict and their political supporters contest attribution and numbers — readers should note these differing incentives when interpreting figures and that multiple sources in the supplied reporting explicitly recognize gaps and uncertainties in casualty accounting [1] [4] [2].