At al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza Metropolis, Alam Hirzallah resigns himself to a grim process: registering the deaths of the spouse and two youngsters 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 jap Gaza Metropolis after Israeli shelling hit the household dwelling. Asma Hirzallah, Mayar, 5, and Abdullah, 3, had 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 had been martyred and advised us to return again for the loss of life certificates. Now we do not know the place to go to bury them because the cemeteries are in areas underneath Israeli management.”
At the least 51,266 individuals have been killed within the 18 months because the Gaza battle started, in line with the Hamas-run Ministry of Well being, with almost a 3rd of the useless aged underneath 18.
Israel has repeatedly challenged the accuracy of the Palestinian fatalities listing – when it comes to general 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 listing doesn’t distinguish between civilians and members of Palestinian armed teams who’re killed within the battle, and Israel has accused Hamas of inflating the chances of ladies and kids.
Lately, a number of media reviews have raised questions concerning 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 had been faraway from later revised lists.
Some 3,000 names had been faraway from official lists of these killed [Reuters]
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 direction of having correct information with excessive credibility.
“In each listing that will get shared, there’s a better verification and revision of the listing. We can not say that the well being ministry removes names. It is not a elimination course of, slightly it’s a revision and verification course of.”
Verifying information
So how are the statistics gathered and the way correct are they?
Till the primary months of this battle, the variety of individuals killed in Gaza was calculated from counting our bodies that arrived in hospitals – like these of Asma Hirzallah and her youngsters.
Medics may log information 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 grew to become extra chaotic and medical websites repeatedly got here underneath assault, this methodology grew to become much less dependable. Through the battle, 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 may use to report their family members useless or lacking.
In response to Mr Wahidi, the pinnacle of statistics on the well being ministry, many of the names which had been not too long ago faraway from the official listing 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 appears to be like into all the circumstances obtained,” Mr Wahidi says. “To make sure credibility we confirm the information in order that it is going to be correct.”
Throughout investigations by the judicial committee, some individuals had been discovered to have died of pure causes – in a roundabout way due to the battle. 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 had been wrongly listed as useless however then discovered to have been amongst hundreds of Gazans imprisoned by Israel.
Mr Wahidi confirms that in August after which October, a complete of greater than 3,000 names had been faraway from the listing, saying this was a precautionary measure pending full checks.
For some pro-Israel teams, corresponding to media watchdog HonestReporting, this was robust indication of “deliberate manipulation, not sincere error”.
Israel accuses Hamas of inflating the variety of Palestinian girls and kids killed [Reuters]
There had been a widespread presumption that solely checked names had been included on the net lists printed.
“It looks as if 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 somewhat bit extra provisional than I had assumed.”
Nonetheless, he says he detects no try by well being officers to mislead and sees the modifications as “a giant clean-up operation”.
He factors out that the newest modifications to the listing 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 carried out in an try to exaggerate the proportion of ladies and kids.
Our bodies underneath rubble
The Gaza well being ministry says it has additionally not too long ago audited information in its official fatalities listing from hospital mortuaries for errors and omissions.
When deaths had been registered by buddies 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 might be nonetheless underneath the rubble left by Israeli air strikes, in addition to about 900 that are unidentified, usually are not presently included within the well being ministry listing, the ministry says.
Nonetheless, the latest two-month ceasefire – which allowed a whole bunch of hundreds 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 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 obtainable in Gaza, every corpse was given a serial quantity. Lengthy kinds had been crammed 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,” stated Sameh Khalifa, who led the workforce.
“Even a damaged tooth is usually a distinguishing mark that may assist a household recognise a lacking liked one.”
Combatant loss of life tolls
For the reason that resumption of Israel’s navy offensive in Gaza on 18 March, the numbers killed have risen every day.
Israel periodically estimates the variety of Palestinian fighters killed. In the beginning of this 12 months, it assessed that 20,000 members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad had been among the many useless. In mid-April it stated there had been “greater than 100 focused eliminations” prior to now 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 listing.
The battle started on 7 October 2023, when Hamas led a cross-border assault on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 individuals, principally civilians, and taking some 250 individuals 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 coming 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.
General, the numbers killed prior to now 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 isn’t a finish in sight to the battle.
