Medics & Humanitarians

The Death Toll — the documented count and the undercount debate

FALASTEEN.AI documentation desk

The Gaza Ministry of Health's documented count — more than 72,500 reported killed by late April 2026 — is the floor, not the ceiling: peer-reviewed analyses using independent methods converge on substantial undercounting, while excess-mortality projections run far higher. This entry records what is documented, what is estimated, and by whom.

UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel — 2024 Reports

UN Commission of Inquiry

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry's 2024 reports: the June 2024 report (A/HRC/56/26) on the 7 October 2023 attacks and Israel's military operations in Gaza, and the September 2024 report (A/79/232) on attacks on Gaza's healthcare system, Palestinian detainees, and hostages.

UNRWA — UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees

UNRWA

Established by UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) in December 1949, UNRWA provides education, health care, and relief to millions of registered Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza.

WHO occupied Palestinian territory — health system support and emergency response

World Health Organization — occupied Palestinian territory

The WHO office for the occupied Palestinian territory supports the Palestinian health system, coordinates the health response to emergencies in Gaza and the West Bank, and publishes situation reports and data on attacks on health care.

Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi

1947–2004

The pediatrician from Yibna, a refugee at six months old, who was one of the seven founders of Hamas in 1987, spokesman of the Marj al-Zuhur deportees, and was killed by Israeli missiles on 17 April 2004, twenty-six days after succeeding Ahmed Yassin.

Eyad al-Sarraj

1944–2013

Gaza's first practising psychiatrist, who built mental health care under occupation into a form of human rights work.

George Habash

1925–2008

The physician from Lydda, expelled with his town in 1948, who founded the Arab Nationalist Movement and then the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Mustafa Barghouti

1954–

The Moscow-trained physician who built the Palestinian Medical Relief Society into a health service reaching over a million patients a year, co-founded the Palestinian National Initiative with Edward Said and Haidar Abdel Shafi, and came second to Abbas in the 2005 presidential election.

Razan al-Najjar

1996–2018

A 21-year-old volunteer paramedic from Khan Younis, shot dead by an Israeli sniper while tending to wounded protesters in Gaza in 2018.

Tawfiq Canaan

1882–1964

Jerusalem physician who documented Palestinian folk life — amulets, saints' shrines, and popular medicine — in foundational works of early twentieth-century ethnography.

Wadie Haddad

1927–1978

Physician, co-founder of the Arab Nationalist Movement and the PFLP, and the architect of its aircraft hijackings — expelled by his own front, killed by poison in 1978.

Gate of the Sun

Elias Khoury

In a Beirut hospital, stories are told to a comatose fighter — an epic retelling of the Palestinian exodus from Galilee to the camps.

Musakhan and Maqluba

Two emblematic dishes of the Palestinian table: sumac-and-onion chicken over taboon bread, and the 'upside-down' rice pot.

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear

Mosab Abu Toha

Addressing the surgeon who opens his ear, Abu Toha catalogs what is stored inside — his mother's voice, songs, and the sounds of drones and bombs — memory as an archive that must be put back in order.

Hebron

Hebron Governorate, southern West Bank

Hebron — al-Khalil, the city of Abraham — is one of the oldest living cities in the world, built around the Ibrahimi Mosque over the Cave of the Patriarchs, famed for its glass and its hospitality, and divided since 1997 into the sharpest microcosm of the occupation.

Abdel Jalil Al-Fayoumi

c. 2001–

Abdel Jalil Al-Fayoumi, 22, survived the February 29, 2024 'flour massacre,' in which at least 112 Palestinians were killed around an aid convoy in Gaza City; after hours of searching he found the body of his 15-year-old cousin Moatasem at Al-Shifa Hospital.

Adnan al-Bursh

c. 1974–2024

Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, 50, head of orthopedics at al-Shifa Hospital, died in Israeli custody at Ofer prison four months after soldiers detained him while he was on duty at al-Awda Hospital; a UN expert said he had reportedly been beaten and bore signs of torture, and demanded an independent international investigation.

Anas al-Sharif

1996–2025

Anas al-Sharif, one of Gaza's most prominent journalists, was killed with five colleagues in an Israeli missile strike on the Al Jazeera tent outside al-Shifa Hospital; Israel claimed responsibility, alleging he led a Hamas cell — an accusation CPJ said lacked credible evidence and fit a documented pattern.

Fadi al-Wahidi

Al Jazeera cameraman

Fadi al-Wahidi was shot in the neck by Israeli fire while filming near Jabalia refugee camp, leaving him paralyzed; Israel blocked his medical evacuation for 122 days despite appeals from UN experts, before he was finally evacuated to Egypt on February 8, 2025.

Ghassan Abu Sitta

1969–

Ghassan Abu Sitta spent 43 days operating under siege in Gaza's al-Ahli and al-Shifa hospitals at the start of the war, then became one of the conflict's most prominent medical witnesses, giving testimony to British police and evidence to the International Criminal Court.

Hind Rajab

2017–2024

Hind Rajab, six, was killed with six relatives when Israeli tank fire hit their car as they fled Tel al-Hawa, after she spent hours on the phone with Red Crescent dispatchers pleading for rescue; the two paramedics sent to save her were also killed, and forensic investigators concluded a tank fired on the car from as close as 13 metres.

Hussam Abu Safiya

c. 1973–

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was detained when Israeli forces raided and shut down Kamal Adwan Hospital — the last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza — and has been held without charge or trial under Israel's 'unlawful combatant' law ever since.

Ibrahim Zaher

c. 2000–2025

Ibrahim Zaher, 25, an Al Jazeera camera operator, was killed with four colleagues when an Israeli missile struck the network's tent at al-Shifa Hospital — the channel's entire Gaza City team, lost in a single strike that press-freedom groups called a targeted attack.

Mariam Abu Daqqa

c. 1992–2025

Mariam Abu Daqqa, 33, was one of five journalists killed in an Israeli 'double-tap' strike on Nasser Hospital that killed at least 20 people; a second missile hit journalists and rescue workers responding to the first strike, in an attack captured live on video.

Marwan al-Sultan

c. 1976–2025

Dr. Marwan al-Sultan, 49, director of Gaza's Indonesian Hospital and one of the last two cardiologists in the Strip, was killed on July 2, 2025, when an Israeli airstrike struck the rented Gaza City apartment where his displaced family was sheltering; his wife, a daughter, his sister and his son-in-law were killed with him, and the Israeli military said it had struck a 'key terrorist' and was reviewing harm to civilians.

Mohammed Qreiqeh

c. 1992–2025

Mohammed Qreiqeh, 33, gave his last broadcast minutes before an Israeli missile hit the journalists' tent at al-Shifa Hospital, killing him with correspondent Anas al-Sharif, cameramen Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, and other media workers; UN experts called the strike a deliberate attempt to silence reporting from Gaza City.

Rakan al-Najjar

c. 2015–2025

Rakan, ten, was one of nine children of doctors Alaa and Hamdi al-Najjar killed when an Israeli airstrike hit the family home in Khan Younis; his name — Rakan Hamdi Yahya al-Najjar, ten years old — appears on the Gaza health authorities' list of the war dead published by The Guardian.

Razan al-Najjar

c. 1997–2018

Razan al-Najjar, 21, a volunteer medic treating protesters at the Gaza boundary fence, was fatally shot by Israeli fire as she stood with fellow medics about 25 meters from the fence in her medical uniform; a B'Tselem investigation concluded she was deliberately targeted, and spatial analysis commissioned by The New York Times traced the shot to a sniper's position at the fence.

Sidra al-Najjar

c. 2024–2025

Sidra, the infant daughter of doctors Alaa and Hamdi al-Najjar, was killed with eight of her siblings on May 23, 2025, when an Israeli airstrike destroyed the family home in Khan Younis while her mother was on duty at Nasser Hospital; CNN, citing the children's cousin, described her as the breastfed baby of the family and reported the missing infant as seven months old — the Guardian and Drop Site News instead identified the family's six-month-old as her sister Sayden.

Yahya al-Najjar

c. 2013–2025

Yahya, twelve, was the eldest of the nine children of doctors Alaa and Hamdi al-Najjar killed when an Israeli airstrike destroyed the family home in Khan Younis; his mother, a pediatrician on duty at Nasser Hospital, ran home to find the house on fire, and his father died of his wounds nine days later.

Yasser Mamdouh El-Fady

1984–2024

Yasser Mamdouh El-Fady, 40, a journalist with the Kan'an News Agency, was killed by sniper fire near Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis as Israeli forces besieged the city's largest functioning hospital; UNESCO's Director-General condemned the killing and demanded an investigation.