How accurate are the death toll figures in the Gaza Strip? Does Hamas control them?
According to Palestinian health authorities, Israel’s ground and air strikes in the Gaza Strip have killed more than 38,000 people, mostly civilians, and displaced most of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents from their homes.
The war began on October 7, when Hamas militants crossed the border into Israeli communities. According to Israel, the militants killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 253 into the Gaza Strip.
This explainer video examines how the Palestinian death toll is calculated, how reliable it is, how the number of civilians and fighters killed is composed, and what each side says about it.
HOW DO HEALTH AUTHORITIES IN GAZA CALCULATE THE NUMBER OF DEATHS?
In the first months of the war, the death toll was based solely on the count of bodies arriving at hospitals. The data included the names and identity numbers of most of those killed.
As the conflict continued and fewer hospitals and morgues became operational, the authorities resorted to other methods.
In early May, the Health Ministry updated its breakdown of the total death toll to include unidentified bodies, which account for nearly a third of all deaths. Omar Hussein Ali, head of the ministry’s emergency operations center in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said these were bodies that arrived at hospitals or medical centers without personal information such as identity numbers or full names.
It also recorded deaths reported online by family members who had to enter information, including identity numbers.
IS THE DEATH COUNTING IN THE GAZA CITY COMPREHENSIVE?
The figures “do not necessarily reflect all casualties, as many victims are still missing under the rubble,” the Palestinian Health Ministry said. In May, it was estimated that around 10,000 deaths had not been counted in this way.
On July 5, the medical journal Lancet published a letter from three academics who estimated that the death toll from indirect deaths, such as from disease, could be several times higher than official Palestinian estimates.
The letter said it was “not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributed to the current conflict in the Gaza Strip.”
The authors said the figure, which made headlines around the world, was based on a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths and one direct death, based on trends from previous conflicts.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health also stated during the conflict that the actual numbers were probably higher than those published, but did not provide details.
HOW CREDIBLE ARE THE DEATH FIGURES IN THE GAZA AREA?
Before the war, Gaza had robust population statistics and better health information systems than most Middle Eastern countries, health experts told Reuters.
A World Health Organization spokesman said the ministry had “good data collection and analysis capacity and its reporting to date was considered credible.”
The United Nations regularly cites the ministry’s death figures and cites it as a source.
At the beginning of the conflict, US President Joe Biden expressed doubts about the number of casualties and the Ministry of Health subsequently published a detailed list of the 7,028 fatalities to date.
Academics who examined the details of the victims listed said in a peer-reviewed article in the Lancet medical journal in November that it was unlikely that the patterns shown in the list could be the result of a fabrication.
However, there are specific questions about the inclusion of the 471 people allegedly killed in an October 17 explosion at al-Ahli al-Arab hospital in Gaza City. An unclassified US intelligence report puts the death toll “at the low end of the scale of 100 to 300”.
DOES HAMAS CONTROL THE NUMBERS?
Although Gaza has been ruled by Hamas since 2007, the enclave’s Ministry of Health is also subordinate to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health in Ramallah in the West Bank.
The Hamas-led government in Gaza has paid the salaries of all public sector employees since 2007, including those in the Ministry of Health. The salaries of those hired before that date are still paid by the Palestinian Authority.
The extent of Hamas control in the Gaza Strip is difficult to assess at present, as Israeli forces occupy most of the area, including the areas surrounding major hospitals where casualty figures are available, and fighting continues.
WHAT DOES ISRAEL SAY?
Israeli officials have said the figures are questionable because Hamas controls the government in Gaza. Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Mamorstein said the figures were manipulated and “do not reflect the reality on the ground.”
However, the Israeli military also admitted in press conferences that the total number of casualties in the Gaza Strip was largely reliable.
In May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said 14,000 Hamas fighters and 16,000 Palestinian civilians had been killed in the war.
HOW MANY CIVILIANS WERE KILLED?
The Health Ministry’s figures do not distinguish between civilians and Hamas fighters, who neither wear an official uniform nor have separate identification cards.
Israel regularly publishes estimates of how many Hamas fighters it believes have been killed. Most recently, Netanyahu estimated the number at 14,000.
Israeli security officials say such estimates are arrived at through a combination of counting battlefield deaths, intercepting Hamas communications and intelligence assessments of personnel at destroyed targets.
Hamas said Israeli estimates of its losses were exaggerated, but did not say how many of its fighters were killed.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, over 70 percent of the dead were women and children. For most of the conflict, figures showed that children made up just over 40 percent of all those killed.
However, conditions in the hospitals where statistics are collected have deteriorated as a result of the fighting, and many of those killed may not be identifiable due to their injuries.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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