Airwars Finds Israel Killed Over 5,000 Civilians in Gaza in October 2023

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.

1/20 The most important research on the “war” in Gaza—for which I was honoured to be a peer reviewer—was just published by @airwars.

This 🧵details their findings, which in my view expose the murderous and likely genocidal nature of the IAF’s October 2023 bombing campaign. pic.twitter.com/h5unJG8z44

— History Speaks (@History__Speaks) December 12, 2024

Airwars recorded a minimum number of 1,213 women were killed in the 606 incidents they reviewed. Women and children were mainly killed in residential buildings in strikes that often slaughtered many members of the same family.

“Families were killed together in unprecedented numbers, and in their
homes. More than nine out of ten women and children were killed in
residential buildings. In more than 95 percent of all cases where a woman
was killed, at least one child was also killed,” the report reads.

The report said that Airwars assumes each person killed is a civilian unless there is evidence to the contrary. “Using publicly available information, Airwars makes every effort to investigate connections between individuals killed and militant groups. Evidence includes any suggestion in local sources that directly associate individuals with participation in hostilities or membership in a militant group,” the report reads.

Airwars said it does not “capture” incidents where militants are killed and there’s no evidence of civilian harm. The group stresses in the report that the 5,139 civilians recorded killed is the minimum number based on the 606 incidents. Airwars is also still assessing other incidents that caused civilian harm during that 25-day period.

“This report considers the most conservative estimates or the lowest possible estimates. Upper estimates of civilian harm are included in each incident published on Airwars’ fully public archive,” the report reads.

The Airwars report aligns with a November 2023 report from 972 Magazine, an Israeli publication, that revealed last year the Israeli military was intentionally bombing civilian targets, including high-rise residential buildings, public buildings, and infrastructure, which it labeled “power targets.”

The 972 report said the purpose of bombing “power targets” was mainly to “harm Palestinian civil society: to ‘create a shock’ that, among other things, will reverberate powerfully and ‘lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas.’” Israeli sources said the Israeli military was generally aware of how many civilians would be killed in a particular strike and would launch an attack to kill one Hamas militant, knowing hundreds of civilians would be killed.

“Nothing happens by accident,” a source told 972. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”

Earlier this year, another report from 972 revealed how the Israeli military was using AI to track Hamas militants and create targets, which makes errors and can falsely label people as militants who are not. One system, called “Where’s Daddy,” was used to track Hamas members to bomb them when they were in their homes with their families. In one incident, the Israeli military authorized the killing of approximately 300 civilians to kill one Hamas commander.

The Biden administration has continued to provide weapons and political support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza despite the overwhelming evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israeli officials have admitted that without US support, the Israeli military couldn’t sustain operations in Gaza for more than a few months.