By BBC Verify team
BBC News
In any warzone, counting the dead is a challenge. Gaza is no different.
As battles there intensify, the chaotic situation - with bombardment by Israeli forces, on-the-ground fighting, communications blackouts, fuel shortages and crumbling infrastructure - makes getting accurate information on the numbers of people who have died extremely demanding.
And Palestinian officials have said there are now “significant difficulties” in obtaining updated information because of the interruption of communications in the Gaza Strip.
The health ministry is Gaza’s official source for death numbers - which it updates regularly. On Monday evening, it said 11,240 people had been killed, including 4,630 children, since the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October which prompted the current war.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
As battles there intensify, the chaotic situation - with bombardment by Israeli forces, on-the-ground fighting, communications blackouts, fuel shortages and crumbling infrastructure - makes getting accurate information on the numbers of people who have died extremely demanding.
A day after Mr Biden’s dismissal of the numbers, the health ministry in Gaza provided more information, publishing an extensive list of names of all those who had been killed between 7 and 26 October.
Healthcare workers like Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a Médecins Sans Frontières plastic surgeon based in London who has been treating people at hospitals in Gaza City, are key to recording those figures.
Others who have scrutinised the health ministry’s figures include economics professor Michael Spagat, from Royal Holloway, University of London - who chairs the charity Every Casualty Counts which studies death tolls in wars.
Ola Awad-Shakhshir, president of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, receives regular updates of deaths from Gaza.
When the BBC approached a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces about why they have cast doubt on the Gazan death figures it said the health ministry was a branch of Hamas and that any information provided by it should be “viewed with caution”.
The original article contains 1,538 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 87%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It’s good that third party NGOs are verifying the counts. Hamas has a very strong incentive to maximize civilian deaths, and are doing their part to put them at risk by telling Gazans to stay in the evacuation zone, using them as human shields, putting their infrastructure in protected areas, and intentionally causing this war in the first place. They are not a trustworthy source. Even if these numbers are accurate they need to be verified.
The health ministry
(Hamas)
That’s what the article is about
There’s a CNN article where UNICEF states that the Gaza health ministry’s numbers are accurate. Do I have to link it?
May as well post this for you to read also. (Though it would seem you didn’t read the article you are replying to, so my hopes aren’t high.)
One snippet out of a lengthy article.
Many experts consider figures provided by the ministry reliable, given its access, sources and accuracy in past statements.
“Everyone uses the figures from the Gaza Health Ministry because those are generally proven to be reliable,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “In the times in which we have done our own verification of numbers for particular strikes, I’m not aware of any time which there’s been some major discrepancy.”
Shakir said Human Rights Watch would not use figures provided by parties with “a propensity to misrepresent information.”
Why news outlets and the U.N. rely on Gaza’s Health Ministry for death tolls
And another:
Throughout four wars and numerous bloody skirmishes between Israel and Hamas, U.N. agencies have cited the Health Ministry’s death tolls in regular reports. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Palestinian Red Crescent also use the numbers.
In the aftermath of war, the U.N. humanitarian office has published final death tolls based on its own research into medical records.
In all cases the U.N.’s counts have largely been consistent with the Gaza Health Ministry’s, with small discrepancies.
— 2008 war: The ministry reported 1,440 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 1,385.
— 2014 war: The ministry reported 2,310 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 2,251.
— 2021 war: The ministry reported 260 Palestinians killed; the U.N. reported 256.
What is Gaza’s Ministry of Health and how does it calculate the war’s death toll?
