14 kids under 10, 25 people over 80: Up-to-date breakdown of Oct 7 victims we know aboutAge, gender data for most civilian victims of Hamas onslaught, based on media tally, provides a picture authorities aim to complete as they continue efforts to identify bodies By ToI Staff 4 December 2023, 11:49 pm
Almost two months after the unprecedented Hamas onslaught on southern Israel, which left some 1,200 people dead, the exact data on those killed in the biggest terror attack in Israeli history is still shrouded in uncertainty.
There have been efforts to compile the available data, particularly the number of babies, children, and elderly people murdered on October 7, even as several members of emergency organizations have been quoted giving imprecise information.
Authorities have identified a total of 274 soldiers and 859 non-soldiers killed during the brutal assault. The latter figure includes 57 Israel Police officers and 38 local security officers. It is unclear which of these individuals were on duty when killed. Removing those victims leaves a figure of 764 civilians.
Partial data by Hebrew media covering the civilians — killed by thousands of invading terrorists and by some of the thousands of rockets fired that day at Israeli cities — reveals that they include two infants, 12 other children under the age of 10, 36 civilians aged 10-19, and 25 elderly people over the age of 80, accounting for 75 of the 764 civilians.
Israel has also named another 15 civilians and members of security forces (not included in the 764 above) who were killed and whose remains are held by terrorists in the Gaza Strip. There are 122 other Israelis and foreigners currently being held hostage in Gaza as a result of the October 7 assault — an unknown number of whom are dead — after a total of 109 hostages were freed by Hamas.
Another hostage (a soldier) was rescued alive by IDF forces, and three bodies of slain hostages — two civilians and one soldier — were recovered by Israeli troops and returned to Israel (also to be added to the sum total of Israelis killed on October 7).
An additional seven Israelis are currently listed as missing, with their families having received no information from authorities about whether they were killed or abducted. An unknown number of foreigners are similarly unaccounted for.
An unknown number of bodies — in mid-November the number was around 100 — are still awaiting identification at the Shura pathological center near Tel Aviv, with difficulties in the process arising because of the state of the remains. Some of the remains are believed to belong to Hamas terrorists.
In summary, Israel has officially identified 1,151 people murdered in the Hamas onslaught, with an unknown number of others still awaiting confirmation, and some of the remaining Gaza hostages possibly dead as well.
An aerial picture shows the abandoned site of the weekend assault by Hamas terrorists on the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im in the Negev Desert, southern Israel, October 10, 2023. (Jack GUEZ / AFP)
Authorities have yet to provide an official breakdown on the victims. But the Walla news site has published data by age and gender for 756 of the murdered civilians for which information is available.
One of them was a baby under the age of one year — 10-month-old Mila Cohen, killed with her father and grandmother.
According to data by Haaretz, a Bedouin woman at the tail end of her pregnancy was shot in the abdomen while heading to the hospital to give birth, where doctors delivered the baby, but failed to save it.
Additionally, 12 children aged 1 to 9 — 10 boys and two girls — were murdered in the Hamas massacres, according to Walla.
Between the ages of 10 and 19, 36 civilians were murdered, 25 of them male and 11 female.
The largest number of confirmed civilian victims, 421, were in the age group of 20-40. Among them were 259 men and 162 women.There were 161 victims between the ages of 41 and 64 — 102 men and 59 women.
Walla reported that 100 victims were aged 65-80, including 69 women and 31 men.And 25 victims were over the age of 80 — 18 men and seven women.
With Israel using advanced technological methods — including from the field of archaeology — to locate the missing and identify more severely mutilated or burnt bodies, authorities hope to soon bring clarity, both to the families of still-missing loved ones, and to the general public, regarding the worst attack on Israeli civilians in the country’s history.
