The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Thursday published its own version of the death toll inflicted by its recent operation in the Gaza Strip, which showed most of the killed were Hamas operatives.

"According to the data gathered by the Research Department of the Israel Defense Intelligence, there were 1,166 names of Palestinians killed during Operation Cast Lead, among which 709 of them are identified as Hamas terror operatives," said the IDF in a statement.

Another 162 men that have been killed did not "attribute to any organization," it said.

It admitted that 295 uninvolved Palestinians were killed during the operation, 89 of them were under the age of 16, and 49 of them were women.

Like its previous comments, the IDF reiterated that its objective was "to target the Hamas terror organization and not the citizens of the Gaza Strip," while accusing Hamas of placing "primary fighting scene at the heart of civilian neighborhoods as it booby-trapped homes, fired from schools, and used civilians as human shields."

The statistics marked a substantial gap with the one assembled by the Palestinian side, which showed that over 1,400 Gazan were killed during the 22-day devastating onslaught, and that a majority of the dead were civilians.

The Jewish state said the operation, which also saw 13 Israelis killed, was launched in response to the continuous rocket fire from Gaza and aimed to restore peace to the rockets-battered south.