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Comment by xg15 | Hacker News Reader

I find the numbers to be surreal. The Gaza war is estimated to have around 100.000 dead (if you also count those who were buried under collapsed buildings or died of indirect causes). That was after two years of bombardment.

This here is the same death toll in two days.

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The Gaza war is a war with the side with the superior army trying to avoid killing. In Iran's war on it's own people, the superior army is trying to kill "as a punishment" (their words).

The same is true for the Russia-Ukraine war, btw. There have been 1300 victims per day for over 3 years. Russia is not trying to minimize casualties.

Why is it surprising that it results in an extreme difference in death toll? Or at least, in the rate of killing.

Yes, but 1300 victims per day, which is absolutely horrible, but still less than 6000 - 50.000 victims per day.

Or as another point of comparison (according to Wikipedia) : The bombing of Dresden went over three days and cost 25.000 lives. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually resulted in 100.000 immediate deaths.

All those locations - the Donbas, Gaza, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were complete wastelands afterwards.

This makes it hard to believe for me. That being said, 3000 would still be absolutely gruesome.

I think in Russia's case it's a matter of practicality. It's not like every day they have an average number of dead and there certainly have been days with far more than 1000 victims per day, they have at least reached 5000 in a single day. I bet fighting around Kyiv got the rate much higher 3 years back too. Ukraine and Russia are not fighting in dense cities like Teheran, but in small rural villages mostly, and a lot of the time in fields, in treelines. Tough to kill many people there.

Iranian Islamic guard was slaughtering people in dense crowds in the middle of skyscrapers. That certainly makes those numbers realistic to me.

Their own people too

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