Israeli officials say the initial death toll of 1,400 included unidentified bodies now believed to be Hamas fighters.
Israel has revised downwards the death toll from the attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on October 7 to around 1,200 people, compared to a previous government estimate of 1,400.
“Approximately 1,200 is the official number of victims of the October 7 massacre,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat said in a written statement on Friday, according to the Reuters news agency.
The figure was updated Thursday, he said.
According to Haiat, this figure was revised because previously unidentified bodies included in the count likely belonged to Palestinian fighters, the AFP news agency reported.
“This is the updated number,” Haiat told AFP. “This is because there were a lot of bodies that were not identified and now we think they belong to terrorists… and not Israeli victims.” »
In a statement criticizing a UNESCO resolution on Friday, Haiat posted on X that Hamas had killed “around 1,200 people” in the attack.
Israel rejects with disgust today’s unilateral resolution by UNESCO regarding the situation in Gaza.
The resolution completely ignores the October 7 massacre carried out by Hamas terrorists, who brutally murdered in cold blood around 1,200 people and kidnapped 240, including babies,… pic.twitter.com/nklsjK5IFp
— Lior Haiat 🇮🇱 (@LiorHaiat) November 10, 2023
The updated figure comes more than a month after Palestinian gunmen carried out an attack on towns, kibbutzim and military bases in southern Israel. This included the killing of Israeli civilians, including women and children, in residential areas and at a music festival.
Israeli authorities also claim that Palestinian groups also captured more than 240 people during the attack, including Israeli soldiers and civilians as well as nationals of numerous foreign countries.
Israel responded by cutting off access to food, electricity and fuel for the Gaza Strip’s more than 2.3 million residents and pounded the area with a relentless bombing campaign.
Relentless Israeli air raids have razed entire neighborhoods, displaced more than 70 percent of Gaza’s residents and killed 11,078 people, according to Palestinian authorities.
The United Nations said that Israeli attacks on Gaza amounted to collective punishment inflicted on a population with few options for safe shelter, and that humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip had become increasingly more disastrous.