Ratio of civil to combatant casualties in Gaza war started by Hamas on October 7, 2023

death civil combatant

This is a short version of the article in Hungarian I posted on February 3, 2024. Things changes since then, and it seems the civil-to-combatant rate went down after Hamas revised its causalty report, but I don't have the time to update it now. I hope at least the links will be useful.

According to the UN the civil-to-combatant causalty rate in "recenet" conflicts is 9:1. that is 9 civilan to 1 combatant.

Kosovo

The NATO in Kosovo during the Yugoslav war has a 4:1 ratio althought in the linked article the numbers range between 1:1 and 10:1.

This also shows how difficult it is to measure it.

Iraq war

In the Iraq war it was 2:1.

Gaza war in 2023-2024

In the Times of Israel, back that time the Hamas reported death count was 23,000 and Israel reported that 9,000 were combatants.

That is a 14,000:9,000 or 1.5:1 ratio.

Since then both numbers grew, but then Hamas revised its numbers reducing them by a lot. Based on that it seems the ratio is around 1:1 or even less than that.