12,000 Hamas fighters killed in Gaza war, double the terror group’s claim, says IDF

Countering Qatar-based Hamas official’s claim that the terror group had lost roughly 6,000 fighters since the conflict began on 7 October, the Israel Defence Forces claimed that they have eliminated approximately 12,000 of Hamas’s estimated 30,000 fighters in the Gaza Strip during the four-month-long war.

According to a Times of Israel report,  additionally, Hamas is believed to have thousands of members who are severely wounded and unable to participate in combat.

According to the report, citing Israeli military’s data released on Monday, Israeli aircraft have conducted more than 31,000 airstrikes since October 7, with over 1,000 strikes in Lebanon and dozens in the West Bank.

The remarks made by the unnamed Hamas official on significant losses are noteworthy as they represent a rare admission from the terror group. The statement also appears to be the first time Hamas has acknowledged a distinction between combatants and civilians in the death toll from the war.

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Furthermore, the Hamas official cautioned that the group possesses the necessary resources to continue its fight against Israel and is prepared for an extended conflict in Rafah and Gaza.

The war erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacres, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing over 250 hostages, mostly civilians, many amid horrific acts of brutality and sexual assault.

Vowing to destroy Hamas and return the hostages, Israel launched an air and ground offensive, in which it says it is targeting all areas in Gaza where Hamas operates, while seeking to minimize civilian casualties.

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The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said on Monday that more than 29,000 people in the Strip have been killed since fighting began, though these figures cannot be independently verified and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. The IDF says it killed some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7 in addition to the 12,000 killed in Gaza since.

In December, IDF officials gave an assessment of two civilian deaths per combatant in Gaza.

“I’m not saying it’s not bad that we have a ratio of two to one,” an unnamed Israeli official told AFP at the time, noting the use of human shields was part of Hamas’s “core strategy.”

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields, providing evidence that the terror group locates operations bases under hospitals, launches rockets from schools and shelters, builds tunnels shafts under children’s bedrooms, stores weapons in and around schools and mosques, and embeds itself within the civilian population amid the ongoing war.

With inputs from agencies