Israel previously said Hamas fighters killed around 1400 people, a figure that was later revised down. AFP
"This is the updated number," ministry spokesman Lior Haiat told AFP. "It is due to the fact that there were a lot of corpses that were not identified and now we think those belong to terrorists ... not Israeli casualties."
Israel previously said Hamas fighters who poured across the heavily militarized border on October 7 killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians.
But in an unrelated statement on Friday that was critical of the UN's cultural agency UNESCO, Haiat said Hamas killed "about 1,200 people".
Haiat separately confirmed the new toll in a statement to AFP.
On day 35 of the war on Gaza, Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes near civilian-packed hospitals and schools killing scores of Palestinians and displacing thousands more.
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said more than 11,000 people have so far been killed in Israel's relentless bombardment of the strip, many of them women and children.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online
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