The United Nations began reporting a much lower death toll among women and children in Gaza, acknowledging that it had incomplete information on many of those killed during Israel’s military offensive in the territory.
As recently as May 6, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its regularly updated report online report that at least 9,500 women and 14,500 children were among the dead, out of a total of 34,735 deaths.
Two days later, the UN declared in another online update that 4,959 women, 7,797 children and 10,006 men had been killed. While the total death toll remained about the same, a U.N. official said he was awaiting more detailed identifying information from authorities in Gaza for about 10,000 deaths, and that they were therefore not included in the new distribution between women, men and children.
The change in the UN figures – and the confusion caused by the discrepancy – has fueled debate over the credibility of the Gaza authorities’ tally of war casualties. The deaths of women and children are seen as an important, if incomplete, indication of the number of civilians killed, an issue that is at the heart of criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war.
This change came about because the United Nations began citing a more conservative source for its figures – the Gaza Ministry of Health – rather than using the Gaza government’s media office, as it had done in recent years. recent weeks. Both offices are part of the Hamas-led government in the enclave.
Many international officials and experts familiar with the way the Health Ministry verifies deaths in Gaza – relying on the territory’s morgues and hospitals – say its figures are generally reliable.
The Health Ministry says its tally of women and children killed is based on the total number of people whose identities it can fully verify – 24,840 people in total as of May 13.
More than 10,000 other people were also killed, the Health Ministry says, but it does not have their full names, official identification numbers or other information it needs to be certain of their identities. . That’s why they are not included in the tally of women and children killed currently cited by the United Nations, officials said.
“There are approximately 10,000 additional bodies that have yet to be fully identified,” UN spokesman Farhan Haq said on Monday. He added: “The details of these – which are children, which are women – will be restored once the full identification process is completed. »
Mr. Haq said the United Nations relies on data from the Ministry of Health, as it has done “in all previous conflicts.”
He added that the UN had started using figures from the Gaza media office because there had been a break in information from the Health Ministry. But now that casualty reports are available again, he said, the U.N. has started using his information again.
What do Israel and other critics say?
Israeli officials say they are suspicious of the Gaza Health Ministry’s tally. An Israeli army spokesperson, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, noted that the Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. He also said that Israel considers every civilian death a tragedy.
After the United Nations released a documented lower death toll of women and children, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz called the new figures a “miraculous resurrection of the dead in Gaza,” saying the United Nations had relied on “false data from a terrorist”. organization.”
Elliott Abrams, a veteran American conservative, said in an article The Council on Foreign Relations said Sunday that it has become “increasingly clear that these figures represent Hamas propaganda.”
But the figures cited by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are not radically different from those used by the United Nations. He said last week that Israeli forces had killed around 14,000 Hamas fighters and 16,000 civilians, for a total of around 30,000, without elaborating on the source of the figures.
Are the new casualty figures considered credible?
In a sign that the American government considers the casualty figures provided by Gaza health authorities to be reliable, President Biden cited the overall death toll in his speech. State of the Union speech in March. The United Nations publishes figures from the Ministry of Health on a website and UN leaders refer to it frequently.
A few weeks ago, the Health Ministry released its latest list detailing the identities of the deaths it had fully documented. It has also released a series of detailed reports explaining how it compiles casualty figures.
Early in the war, when the figures were questioned, the Ministry of Health published a list of the names, ages and identification numbers of the dead. Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine analyzed this data in a report published in November in The Lancetand found “no obvious reason to doubt the validity of the data.”
Airwars, a British organization that assesses claims of harm to civilians in conflicts, compared the names of those killed with lists of names published by the Department of Health. The vast majority of names match, said Emily Tripp, the group’s director. Airwars also analyzed a health ministry list of names released earlier in the conflict and found that the proportion of children, women and men reported by the ministry roughly matched its own data collection, she declared.
Neta Crawford, professor of political science at Oxford University and founder of the Costs of War project, which examines the consequences of post-9/11 wars, argued that the figures appeared to have been produced according to professional standards.
How is the number of victims calculated?
International experts who have worked with Gaza health officials during this and other wars say the enclave’s hospitals and morgues collect and report the names, identification numbers and other details of people who were killed in the territory.
The detailed count excludes thousands of people missing in hospitals but believed to be buried. under the rubble; they are only considered dead when their bodies are found.
The Gaza media office has always provided an overall death toll similar to that given by the Health Ministry, but different and often higher figures for the number of women and children killed.
Ismail Al Thawabateh, director general of the office, said in an interview that the Health Ministry only listed and classified a person as deceased when all their details have been documented and verified by the next of kin. He did not explain why his office used a breakdown of women and children based on total deaths.
“The other 10,000 are bodies that entered hospitals but so far the next of kin have not yet been contacted to verify how they were martyred and complete their information,” he said .
When contacted, Ashraf al-Qudra, the spokesperson for the Gaza Health Ministry, referred his questions to the Health Ministry’s latest report on May 13.
Patrick Kingsley And Ameera Harouda reports contributed.
