The United Nations has begun citing much lower numbers of deaths of women and children in Gaza, acknowledging that it has incomplete information on many of those killed during Israel’s military offensive in the territory.
As recently as May 6, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its regularly updated online report that at least 9,500 women and 14,500 children were among the dead, out of a total of 34,735 dead.
Two days later, the UN said in another online update that 4,959 women, 7,797 children and 10,006 men had been killed. While the total number of deaths remained roughly the same, a U.N. official said he was awaiting more identifying information from officials in Gaza on about 10,000 of the dead, so they were not included in the new breakdown of women. men and boys.
The change in UN figures – and confusion over the discrepancy – has added fuel to the debate over the credibility of Gaza authorities’ death tolls in the war. The deaths of women and children are seen as an important, if incomplete, indication of how many civilians have died, an issue that is at the heart of criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war.
The change came because the United Nations began citing a more conservative source for its figures (the Gaza Ministry of Health) instead of using the Gaza Government Media Office, as it had done in recent weeks. Both offices are part of the Hamas-led government in the enclave.
Many officials and international experts familiar with how the Health Ministry verifies deaths in Gaza — from morgues and hospitals across the territory — say its figures are generally reliable.
The Ministry of Health says its count of murdered women and children 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 people have also been killed, the Health Ministry says, but it does not have their full names, official identification numbers or other information needed to be sure of their identities. That’s why they are not included in the breakdown of slain women and children now cited by the U.N., officials said.
“There are around 10,000 more bodies that have yet to be fully identified,” UN spokesman Farhan Haq said Monday. He added: “The details of them, which are children and which are women, will be restored once the full identification process is completed.”
Haq said the United Nations was relying on data coming 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 pause in reporting from the Health Ministry. But now that the ministry’s victim reports were again available, he said, the UN had once again used his information.
What do Israel and other critics say?
Israeli officials say they are suspicious of the Gaza Health Ministry’s count. An Israeli army spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said the Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in numbers. He also said that Israel views every civilian death as a tragedy.
After the United Nations released a lower documented death toll of women and children, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz called the new figures “the miraculous resurrection of the dead in Gaza,” saying the United Nations United Nations had relied on “false information from a terrorist.” organization.”
Elliott Abrams, a veteran American conservative, said Sunday in an article for the Council on Foreign Relations that it has become “increasingly clear that these figures represent Hamas propaganda.”
But the figures cited by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel are not drastically different from those used by the United Nations. He said last week that Israeli forces had killed about 14,000 Hamas fighters and 16,000 civilians, for a total of about 30,000, without elaborating on the source of those figures.
Are the new casualty figures considered credible?
In a sign that the U.S. government considers casualty figures provided by Gaza health authorities reliable, President Biden cited the total death toll in his State of the Union address in March. The United Nations publishes the Health Ministry’s figures on a website and UN leaders refer to them frequently.
A few weeks ago, the Ministry of Health published its latest list detailing the identities of the dead that it had fully documented. It has also published a series of detailed reports explaining how it compiles casualty figures.
At the beginning of the war, when its figures were questioned, the Ministry of Health published a list of names, ages and identification numbers of the dead. Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine analyzed that data in a report published in November in The Lancet and found “no obvious reason to doubt the validity of the data.”
Airwars, a British organization that assesses reports of harm to civilians in conflict, has compared the names of people reported dead with lists of names published by the Ministry of Health. The vast majority of the names match, said Emily Tripp, the group’s director. Airwars also analyzed a Health Ministry list of names published 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 said.
Neta Crawford, a professor of political science at the University of Oxford 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 to professional standards.
How are victim figures compiled?
International experts who have worked with health officials in Gaza 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 have been killed in the territory.
The detailed count excludes thousands of people reported missing in hospitals but believed to be buried under rubble; They are only counted as dead when their bodies are found.
The Gaza media office has consistently provided an overall death toll similar to that provided by the Ministry of Health, 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 listed and categorized an individual as dead only when all his details had been documented and verified by a next of kin. He did not explain why his office used a breakdown of women and children based on the total number of dead.
“The remaining 10,000 are bodies that have entered hospitals but until now the relatives have not 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 questions to the Health Ministry’s latest report on May 13.
Patrick Kingsley and Ameera Harouda contributed reports.