World Health Organization ( W. H. O. ) Even though the number of women and kids killed in the fight appeared to have been significantly revised in the most recent U.N. review, spokesman Christian Lindmeier said on Tuesday that the U.N. health agency also has complete trust in the victim figures that the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health reported.
” Nothing bad with the information. The entire files are still the same”, Lindmeier insisted. ” The point we now have 25, 000 identified folks is a step forward”.
” We’re basically talking about 35, 000 people who are dead, and, really, every life matters, does n’t it? At the same press event, U.N. Human Rights Office spokesperson Liz Throssel made the pitch that” we know that many, many of those are women and children, and there are hundreds missing under the rubble.”
Lindmeier and Throssel were referring to information that the U. N.   published on May 8 that appeared to have reduced the number of women and children allegedly killed in the Gaza conflict by quarter.
Only a few days previously, the U. N. said almost 9, 500 women and 14, 500 children had been killed, but, in its May 8 statement, those numbers were revised to a more accurate and much lower matter of 4, 959 and 7, 797, both.
When reporters asked about the new figures, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attributed the “fog of war” to inaccurate early figures and claimed that the numbers could change once more under further” cross checks.”
Since Hamas started the Gaza war on October 7, the Israeli government says it has killed 14, 000 Hamas terrorists and 16, 000 civilians. With the new U.N. figures, these figures perform significantly better than the earlier estimates, which were twice as high.
The U.N. made a new explanation available on Monday, claiming that the number of deaths is still at roughly 35, 000, but that the lower figures from May 8 only included bodies that had been fully identified and recovered.
” What’s changed is the ministry of health in Gaza has updated the breakdown of fatalities, for whom full details have been documented”, spokesman Farhan Aziz Haq said.
Given the current state of affairs on the ground and the sheer number of fatalities, the UN teams on the ground in Gaza are unable to independently verify those figures, Haq added.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz mocked the revised reports as” the miraculous resurrection of the dead in Gaza,” despite the U.N., W. H. O., and various human rights organizations ‘ assurances that the reports from the Gaza health ministry were accurate.
Katz said on Monday, repeating his plea for Guterres to step down, that “anyone who relies on fake data from a terrorist organization to promote blood libels against Israel is antisemitic and supports terrorism.”
The Gaza health minister’s death claims were made by “vague figures reported by Hamas as coming from’reliable media sources,” according to skeptical analysts The Times of Israel ( TOI ) on Monday.
Professors Lewi Stone and Gregory Rose, who studied the U.N. data, told TOI that almost 90 percent of the extra unregistered deaths would have to be women and children to be accurate. This is because the figures must be significantly higher than the hospital-registered deaths.
That scenario was described by Stone and Rose as” statistically absurd.” Additionally, they noted that the information about “unregistered deaths” coming from media reports was much more buried in the Gaza health ministry documents than it should have been. The reference to “media reports” was eliminated in recent copies of this information, which claimed the unregistered deaths were caused by people with “incomplete data,” or a lack of identifying information.
Rose said:
The significant change in figures made by OCHA ( the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ) is evidence that their earlier releases were at best inflated and allegedly manipulated false figures. The change of policy is only intended to preserve face.
The U.N. agency reiterated that it believes the total number of estimated fatalities from the conflict has not changed when TOI relayed these concerns to OCHA.
Given the current state of affairs on the ground and the tragic nature of the deaths, UN teams in Gaza are unable to independently verify these figures, according to OCHA. ” For this reason, all figures used by the U. N. clearly cite the Ministry of Health in Gaza as the source. When circumstances permit, the U.N. will check these figures as much as possible.
