Over 75,000 Palestinians died in the first 15 months of the latest round of the conflict between Hamas and Israel, exceeding the figure of over 49,000 deaths reported by Gaza's health authorities at the time, according to a study from The Lancet Global Health medical journal published on Wednesday.
The study found that about 75,200 Palestinians were killed between Oct 7, 2023 and Jan 5, 2025, representing approximately 3.4 percent of the Gaza Strip's pre-conflict population.
Women, children, and elder people comprised 56.2 percent of violent deaths, totaling 42,200 deaths, which is largely in line with the reporting from Gaza's health authorities for this period, the study said.
In addition, the study found during this period there was an estimated 16,300 non-violent deaths, triggered by disease, accidents or other causes not directly linked to the conflict.
The lead author of the study is Michael Spagat, a professor at Royal Holloway, University of London. The field work was conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.
From Dec 30, 2024 to Jan 5, 2025, the researchers surveyed 2,000 households and used raking procedures to adjust demographic characteristics to calculate the total death toll.
Researchers said the study is the first independent population survey of mortality in the Gaza Strip free from the reporting from Gaza health authorities.
They said that under extreme wartime conditions, any errors in mortality statistics are more likely to reflect undercounting rather than overreporting.
On Jan 28, 2026, the Israel Defense Forces said that about 70,000 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza since October 2023, a figure broadly close to that released by Gaza’s health authorities in late November 2025.
Israel had previously never officially acknowledged the casualty figures released by the Palestinian side. Many international experts have said the figures released by the Palestinian health authorities are credible and may even be conservative.
Study finds Gaza death toll from conflict’s first 15 months much higher than reported
A Chinese research team has developed an integrated communication system bridging optical fiber and wireless networks, setting a new world record for data transmission speed, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The increasing demand for computing power in AI data centers and the development of next-generation 6G wireless networks require high-speed, low-latency signal transmission across diverse scenarios.
However, differences in signal architecture and hardware between optical fiber and wireless communication systems have made it difficult to achieve high-speed, compatible end-to-end transmission between the two systems on the same infrastructure, posing a major challenge for high-speed telecommunications networks.
The research team, comprising researchers from Peking University, the Peng Cheng Laboratory, ShanghaiTech University, and the National Optoelectronics Innovation Center, has developed a converged communication system that achieves single-channel signal transmission of 512 Gbps over optical fiber and 400 Gbps over wireless.
According to Wang Xingjun, one of the paper's corresponding authors at Peking University, the new system supports dual-mode transmission via both optical fiber and wireless networks, not only avoiding bandwidth limitations and noise accumulation but also enhancing anti-interference capabilities.
The team also simulated a large-scale 6G user access scenario, demonstrating multichannel real-time 8K video access across 86 channels, achieving a transmission bandwidth more than ten times that of the current 5G standard.
Beyond enabling ultra-large-capacity communication, the system exhibits excellent performance in terms of energy consumption, cost and scalability for large-scale deployment. The system's all-optical architecture enables seamless integration with existing optical networks, fostering deep convergence between mobile access networks and optical fiber networks.
Wang noted that the new system has significant application potential in scenarios such as 6G base stations and wireless data centers and could reshape the architecture of telecommunication systems, laying the foundation for next-generation ultra-broadband, high-speed integrated fiber-wireless communication.
Chinese scientists make breakthrough in optical communication, 6G technology
