"The (Israeli military) clarifies that the details published do not reflect official ... data", military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani posted on social media.
"Any publication or report on this matter will be released through official and orderly channels."
Israel's left-leaning daily Haaretz had reported Thursday that the military "accepted the estimate of the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry that approximately 71,000 Palestinians were killed during the Israel-Gaza war," sparked by Hamas' unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Haaretz added that the military "said it is currently analysing the data on the dead to see how many of them are combatants and how many are civilians".
Hamas took power in the Gaza Strip in 2007 after winning elections and violently ousting the Palestinian Authority, which had administered the territory since Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005, after more than 38 years of military occupation.
Its October 7, 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally that includes hostages who died or were killed during their captivity in the Gaza Strip.
Since then, at least 71,667 Palestinians have been killed in the small coastal territory by Israel's retaliatory military campaign, according to Gaza's health ministry.
Israeli authorities have repeatedly questioned the credibility of these figures or sought to discredit them by saying one cannot trust an administration under Hamas authority -- a movement Israel, the United States and the European Union designate as a "terrorist organisation."
The ministry's figures are nevertheless considered reliable by the United Nations.
While they do not specify the share of armed Palestinian fighters among the dead, the ministry says more than half of those killed are children and women.
Its statistics only record people killed in Israeli bombardments or fighting. They do not take into account deaths whose bodies have not yet been pulled from the rubble of a territory devastated by Israeli strikes, nor indirect deaths caused by the war.
According to the ministry, 492 people have been killed by Israeli fire or bombardments since October 10 and the entry into force of a truce that the two sides accuse each other of violating daily.
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