Israel has called securing the freedom of the hostages abducted to the Gaza Strip a key goal in its war against Hamas, so many in the country were shocked Tuesday when it emerged that at least one-fifth of the captives were already dead.

The news was likely to worsen a furor in Israel, where a debate over the government’s course of action in Gaza regarding the hostages has become divisive.

Israeli intelligence officers have concluded that at least 30 of the remaining 136 hostages captured by Hamas and its allies on Oct. 7 have died since the start of the war, according to a confidential assessment that was reviewed by The New York Times.

The bodies of two other dead Israelis, killed in 2014 during a previous war between Israel and Hamas, have been held in the territory ever since, bringing the total number of slain hostages inside Gaza to at least 32.

The Israeli government late Tuesday released a statement saying that only 31 had been confirmed dead; the discrepancy between the two numbers could not be immediately reconciled.

“We have informed 31 families that their captured loved ones are no longer among the living and that we have pronounced them dead,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the military’s chief spokesperson, said Tuesday after the Times published a report about the previously undisclosed hostage deaths.

Four officials said Israeli intelligence officers were also assessing unconfirmed information that indicated that at least 20 other hostages may have also been killed.

Some of the dead were killed inside Israel on Oct. 7.

Their deaths were unconfirmed at the time and they were counted among the hostages, but their bodies were taken by Hamas to Gaza, according to two of the officials.

Others were injured during the Hamas-led assault and died of their injuries after being abducted to Gaza, the officials said. Others still, the officials added, were killed by Hamas once inside Gaza.

At least three hostages were killed by the Israeli military during its ground operations. Another was killed during a failed rescue operation.

Israeli soldiers found the bodies of some hostages, intact and without external injuries, inside the warren of tunnels Hamas has dug beneath Gaza.

The army has yet to clarify the causes of those deaths.

The figure of 32 deaths is higher than any previous number Israeli authorities have publicly disclosed.

In January, some family members stormed a meeting at Israel’s parliament to demand that lawmakers take greater action to secure the captives’ release.

That protest and similar demonstrations in recent months have helped expose a societal rift between those who support making a deal with Hamas to secure the captives’ release and those who seek the group’s total destruction.