Data shows 98 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since war began

Israeli data shows at least 98 Palestinians have died in custody since October 2023, and the real toll is likely to be substantially higher because hundreds of people detained in Gaza are missing, an Israel-based human rights group has said.

- Emma Graham-Harrison Yuval Abraham Jerusalem

Physicians for Human Rights - Israel (PHRI) tracked deaths from causes including physical violence, medical neglect and malnutrition for a new report, using freedom of information requests, forensic reports and interviews with lawyers, activists, relatives and witnesses.

Israeli authorities only provided comprehensive data for the first eight months of the war. Over this period official figures show an unprecedented casualty rate among Palestinian detainees, on average one death every four days.

The military last updated data on deaths in detention for May 2024, and the Israel Prison Service that September. PHRI researchers identified another 35 deaths in detention after these dates and confirmed them with the Israeli authorities.

Although the total number of deaths charted is significantly higher than other recent estimates, the new data probably failed to capture the full scale of Palestinian loss, said Naji Abbas, the director of the prisoners and detainees department at PHRI. “Even though we are providing evidence for a higher number of deaths than [previously reported] this is not a full picture. We are sure that there are still people who died in detention that we don’t know about.”

Classified data suggests the majority of Palestinians from Gaza who died in jail were civilians, according to a parallel investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.