What is the best choice among the four below sentences?

Question

1. In the earthquake, thousands of people died.

2. In the earthquake, thousands died.

3. In the earthquake, thousand of people died.

4. In the earthquake, thousand died.

Answer 1

As mentioned on the comments, depending on what the actual number of dead people is you might want to say one of the followings :

• In the earthquake, thousands of people died.

• In the earthquake, thousands died.

• In the earthquake, a thousand people died.

• In the earthquake, one thousand people died.