Gaza well being ministry denies manipulating demise toll figures

At al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza Metropolis, Alam Hirzallah resigns himself to a grim activity: 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 substantiate they have been martyred and instructed 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 underneath Israeli management.”

At the very least 51,266 folks have been killed within the 18 months because the Gaza conflict started, in line with the Hamas-run Ministry of Well being, with practically a 3rd of the lifeless aged underneath 18.

Israel has repeatedly challenged the accuracy of the Palestinian fatalities checklist – when it comes to total numbers, and particularly, the demographic breakdown – claiming it’s used as Hamas propaganda. The figures are cited with attribution, by UN businesses and broadly within the media.

The checklist 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 girls and kids.

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 give attention to 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 an absence of transparency, insisting: “The well being ministry works in the direction of having correct knowledge with excessive credibility.

“In each checklist that will get shared, there’s a higher verification and revision of the checklist. We can not say that the well being ministry removes names. It isn’t a elimination course of, relatively 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 folks killed in Gaza was calculated from counting our bodies that arrived in hospitals – like these of Asma Hirzallah and her kids.

Medics might log knowledge for all deaths right into a centralised pc system, which was primarily based 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 underneath assault, this technique turned much less dependable. Throughout the conflict, Israel says it has focused hospitals – which have protected standing underneath 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 members might use to report their family members lifeless or lacking.

In accordance with Mr Wahidi, the top of statistics on the well being ministry, many of the names which have been just lately faraway from the official checklist 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 might 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 will probably be correct.”

Throughout investigations by the judicial committee, some folks have been discovered to have died of pure causes – in a roundabout way 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 lifeless 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 checklist, saying this was a precautionary measure pending full checks.

For some pro-Israel teams, comparable to media watchdog HonestReporting, this was sturdy 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 like they’re really updating the lists extra in actual time, as extra info seems,” says Professor Mike Spagat of Royal Holloway School, chair of Each Casualty Counts, an unbiased civilian casualty monitoring organisation. “We must always have regarded the earlier lists as a little bit 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 “a giant clean-up operation”.

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

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

When deaths have been registered by mates 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 folks being marked as lifeless.

1000’s of our bodies which might be nonetheless underneath the rubble left by Israeli air strikes, in addition to about 900 that are unidentified, are usually not at the moment included within the well being ministry checklist, the ministry says.

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

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

With no DNA testing out there 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 determine the lifeless.

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

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

For the reason that resumption of Israel’s navy offensive in Gaza on 18 March, the numbers killed have risen day by day.

Israel periodically estimates the variety of Palestinian fighters killed. Firstly of this 12 months, it assessed that 20,000 members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have been among the many lifeless. 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 checklist.

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

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

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.

Total, the numbers killed previously 12 months and a half dwarf these from earlier rounds of preventing within the decades-old Israel-Palestinian battle and but, for the second, there is no such thing as a finish in sight to the conflict.