Gaza health ministry denies manipulating death toll figures

At al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza Metropolis, Alam Hirzallah resigns himself to a grim process: registering the deaths of the spouse and two kids of his grieving cousin.

His household introduced the our bodies right here on an electrical rickshaw or tuk-tuk. They discovered them of their home in japanese Gaza Metropolis after Israeli shelling hit the household house. Asma Hirzallah, Mayar, 5, and Abdullah, 3, have been killed.

“The hospital requested for his or her full names and ID numbers,” explains Alam, referring to the numbers all Palestinians are given in a inhabitants registry administered by Israel.

“They gave us a paper to verify they have been martyred and advised us to return again for the demise certificates. Now we do not know the place to go to bury them because the cemeteries are in areas below Israeli management.”

Not less than 51,266 individuals have been killed within the 18 months because the Gaza conflict started, in keeping with the Hamas-run Ministry of Well being, with almost a 3rd of the useless aged below 18.

Israel has repeatedly challenged the accuracy of the Palestinian fatalities record – by way of general numbers, and particularly, the demographic breakdown – claiming it’s used as Hamas propaganda. The figures are cited with attribution, by UN companies and extensively within the media.

The record doesn’t distinguish between civilians and members of Palestinian armed teams who’re killed within the conflict, and Israel has accused Hamas of inflating the odds of ladies and youngsters.

Not too long ago, a number of media reviews have raised questions in regards to the reliability of the statistics by highlighting anomalies between the August and October 2024 and March 2025 lists of fatalities. The reviews concentrate on how some 3,000 names of individuals initially recognized as fatalities have been faraway from later revised lists.

A Gazan well being official, Zaher al-Wahidi, denied to the BBC that victims had vanished or that there was a scarcity of transparency, insisting: “The well being ministry works in the direction of having correct knowledge with excessive credibility.

“In each record that will get shared, there’s a higher verification and revision of the record. We can’t say that the well being ministry removes names. It is not a elimination course of, quite it’s a revision and verification course of.”

So how are the statistics gathered and the way correct are they?

Till the primary months of this conflict, the variety of individuals killed in Gaza was calculated from counting our bodies that arrived in hospitals – like these of Asma Hirzallah and her kids.

Medics may log knowledge for all deaths right into a centralised laptop system, which was based mostly at a Ministry of Well being workplace at al-Shifa hospital, with a back-up at al-Rantissi hospital.

Nonetheless, as circumstances turned extra chaotic and medical websites repeatedly got here below assault, this technique turned much less dependable. Throughout the conflict, Israel says it has focused hospitals – which have protected standing below worldwide regulation – as a result of Hamas has used them to cover its fighters and infrastructure – one thing the armed group denies.

From the beginning of 2024, Gazan well being officers launched on-line kinds which family may use to report their family members useless or lacking.

In accordance with Mr Wahidi, the top of statistics on the well being ministry, many of the names which have been lately faraway from the official record as a part of a brand new checking course of had initially been submitted utilizing these kinds. He says that names that are taken off could later be added again

“A judicial committee was arrange and it seems to be into the entire circumstances obtained,” Mr Wahidi says. “To make sure credibility we confirm the information in order that it will likely be correct.”

Throughout investigations by the judicial committee, some individuals have been discovered to have died of pure causes – indirectly due to the conflict. When Gazans die from lack of medical therapy, malnutrition or hyperthermia, Mr Wahidi clarifies “these circumstances are oblique and don’t get added to the lists.”

Different people have been wrongly listed as useless however then discovered to have been amongst 1000’s of Gazans imprisoned by Israel.

Mr Wahidi confirms that in August after which October, a complete of greater than 3,000 names have been faraway from the record, saying this was a precautionary measure pending full checks.

For some pro-Israel teams, comparable to media watchdog HonestReporting, this was robust indication of “deliberate manipulation, not trustworthy error”.

There had been a widespread presumption that solely checked names have been included on the net lists printed.

“It looks as if they’re truly updating the lists extra in actual time, as extra data seems,” says Professor Mike Spagat of Royal Holloway School, chair of Each Casualty Counts, an impartial civilian casualty monitoring organisation. “We should always have regarded the earlier lists as just a little bit extra provisional than I had assumed.”

Nonetheless, he says he detects no try by well being officers to mislead and sees the adjustments as “an enormous clean-up operation”.

He factors out that the newest modifications to the record led to a small improve within the share of grownup males amongst these killed, countering the concept the unique inclusion of the three,000-plus names was completed in an try and exaggerate the proportion of ladies and youngsters.

The Gaza well being ministry says it has additionally lately audited knowledge in its official fatalities record from hospital mortuaries for errors and omissions.

When deaths have been registered by associates or neighbours, it says, they usually didn’t know the ID numbers of these killed or their full names – which embrace the daddy and grandfather’s names. In some circumstances, this resulted within the mistaken individuals being marked as useless.

Hundreds of our bodies which can be nonetheless below the rubble left by Israeli air strikes, in addition to about 900 that are unidentified, will not be at present included within the well being ministry record, the ministry says.

Nonetheless, the current two-month ceasefire – which allowed a whole bunch of 1000’s of displaced Gazans to return to what was left of their houses – noticed almost 800 corpses being retrieved, recognized and registered.

In late January, the BBC filmed workers from the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency as they set about retrieving human stays which had been left for months in Wadi Gaza – also referred to as the Netzarim Hall – after a pullout by Israeli forces.

With no DNA testing obtainable in Gaza, every corpse was given a serial quantity. Lengthy kinds have been stuffed in to log the bones and clothes collected to attempt to establish the useless.

“We search for distinctive private belongings: a watch, a necklace or an earring. After we search the our bodies, it is very potential that we’ll discover a driver’s licence or ID card,” mentioned Sameh Khalifa, who led the workforce.

“Even a damaged tooth generally is a distinguishing mark that can assist a household recognise a lacking liked one.”

Because the resumption of Israel’s army offensive in Gaza on 18 March, the numbers killed have risen day by day.

Israel periodically estimates the variety of Palestinian fighters killed. At first of this yr, it assessed that 20,000 members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have been among the many useless. In mid-April it mentioned there had been “greater than 100 focused eliminations” previously month.

Israel doesn’t present its figures for civilian deaths in Gaza and has not formally challenged any of the names on the native well being ministry casualty record.

The conflict started on 7 October 2023, when Hamas led a cross-border assault on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 individuals, largely civilians, and taking some 250 individuals into captivity in Gaza. Since then, the Israeli army says that 408 of its troopers have been killed in fight.

Worldwide journalists, together with the BBC, are blocked by Israel from coming into Gaza independently, so are unable to confirm figures from both aspect.

We rely closely on native Palestinian journalists working with us to entry details about lethal assaults – interviewing witnesses in addition to visiting bomb websites and hospital mortuaries to movie footage, which is shared with us.

General, the numbers killed previously yr and a half dwarf these from earlier rounds of combating within the decades-old Israel-Palestinian battle and but, for the second, there isn’t any finish in sight to the conflict.