There was a time when NATO SECRET more or less meant Not all that officially secret.
One defence may well be 'I did nothing wrong'.
Think for a moment who already knows the information. Surviving members of the family know. The '22 members of the wedding party' were reported in the press. The vehicle that was destroyed but subsequently reported to be . . . etc.
A very large number of the deaths have been reported in the foreign (that includes US and UK). I would even guess that some commercial intelligence company is already collating such information.
Such number from military sources would in all probablilty be very similar to open source. All the military or government figures do is act as confirmation. Difficult to defend on grounds of national security. One line of defence could be to argue that the material was not classified.
As for talking to the gentlefolk of the press, one is given lines to take but equally one is also told not to lie. That is the fine line. "Tell me Colonel, how many . . . ?" Er um. "Colonel would it be true to say that 3000-4000 . . . "
Rock and a hard place. Say nothing and you could be assumed to have agreed with that figure. Snap call, actual figure is less and therefore les embarrassing. "No, that exagerates the figure, in reality it is . . . "
In my scenario the information is passed verbally, it is selected from a larger document and the whole is not released. As has been said, 256 shades of grey.