The monitoring group Airwars released a new report on Thursday that found Israeli forces killed a minimum of 5,139 civilians during the first 25 days of its bombing campaign in Gaza starting on October 7, 2023.
Airwars examined 606 incidents of civilian harm and found that only 32-60 militants were killed in those same strikes. Using the higher estimate of 60 militant deaths, the ratio of civilians to combatants killed in the 606 incidents is about 85:1. Using the lower estimate of 32 brings the ratio to about 160:1.
Airwars said the scale of civilian harm was incomparable to any other 21st-century conflict and that the number of civilians killed in the first 25 days was “nearly four times more civilians reported killed in a single month than in any conflict Airwars has documented since it was established in 2014.”
The report detailed the huge number of children killed in Gaza during the first 25 days. “Airwars recorded a minimum of 1,900 children killed by Israeli military action in Gaza. This is nearly seven times higher than even the most deadly month for children previously recorded by Airwars,” the report reads.