NEW YORK, November 7. /TASS/. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that of the 10,000 fatalities in the Gaza Strip reported by the local Health Ministry, "several thousand" are militants of the Palestinian Hamas movement.

"I wouldn’t take these numbers at face value. I think we need to check them, and there are several thousand Palestinian combatants there that <…> are incorporated in these numbers," he told ABC News, adding that Israel was dealing with a "particularly brutal enemy" represented by Hamas.

Al Jazeera TV reported earlier that Gaza's Health Ministry said the day before that 10,022 Gaza residents, including at least 4,104 children, had died since tensions escalated on October 7.