The Human Cost
22,000
disputed broad estimate
The 22,000 display total is a rounded estimate. National figures differ and many event values combine killed, wounded, missing, and prisoners; campaign and battle records overlap and cannot be summed.
Each dot below represents 1,000 human lives. Scroll to watch the scale unfold.
Working allocation: 21,000 soldiers killed in combat, from wounds, or from disease. Each = 1,000 lives.
1,000 civilians killed — from violence, famine, disease, and displacement. Wars are not fought only by soldiers.
incl. 600 civilians
How Six-Day War's dead compare to other conflicts and events.
776 dead
776 Israelis killed — a shockingly low number that masked the catastrophic cost paid by the Arab armies
5,000 dead
Egypt lost an entire army in Sinai — thousands captured and hundreds of tanks destroyed in 72 hours
12,000 dead
Egyptian dead in Sinai alone — the destruction of Nasser's military was total and stunning
20,224 dead
20,000+ Arab military dead across six days against 776 Israeli losses — an asymmetry without precedent in modern warfare
300,000 dead
300,000 Palestinian and Syrian civilians displaced — the war's political consequences would dwarf its military ones