With much of Gaza reduced to rubble by 10 weeks of warfare, counting the dead has become a problem for the Hamas-run state’s health department, as the dying burden nears 40, 000.
In the early stages of the conflict, US President Joe Biden repeatedly questioned the accuracy of the ministry’s normal numbers.
However, many UN agencies in Gaza have confirmed that the figures are accurate and frequently cited by international organizations.
Data set
Two journalists witnessed health services enter fatalities in the commission’s collection.
Health officials in Gaza identify the bodies of the dead first by their own personal items recovered, or by their friend’s or relative’s physical recognition.
The deceased’s data is then entered in the health ministry’s online databases, often including name, gender, delivery time and ID number.
Staff report the dying under a number along with all the information they were able to obtain when bodies may be identified because they are difficult to identify or when no one claims them.
Any defining marks that may help with eventually identification, whether specific products or a mark, are collected and photographed.
Central register
The health department of Gaza has released a number of comments outlining its methods for determining the death toll.
Every Arab killed during the war is identified as having the “personal information and identity amount” of each hospital when they are declared dead, according to the Hamas government’s direct control of the region’s public hospitals.
The health agency’s main registry receives the information every day.
According to a government speech, those who pass away in personal hospitals and clinics are recorded on a variety that must be sent to the department within 24 hours so that it can be added to the main registry.
The agency’s “information center” then verifies the information comments to “ensure they do not have any duplicates or errors”, before saving them in the collection, the statement added.
Israeli authorities also offer advice to residents of Gaza to report any family deaths to a government website. The info is used for the agency’s verifications.
The government has civil servants who are in charge of the Gaza-based Hamas-led state and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.
” Great relationship”
An analysis conducted by Airways, an NGO focused on the impact of combat on civilians, analysed the data entries for 3, 000 of the dead and found” a great relationship” between the agency’s data and what Israeli civilians reported website, with 75 percent of officially reported names also appearing on the ministry’s list.
The ministry’s figures “less accurate” as the war dragged on, a finding the study explained because of the ministry’s extensive damage to the country’s healthcare system.
For instance, at southern Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, one of the few still at least partly functioning, only 50 out of 400 computers still work, its director Atef al-Hout told AFP.
Israeli authorities frequently criticize the ministry’s figures for omitting combatants from civilians. However, neither the army nor Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, deny the magnitude of the overall toll.
The press office of Gaza’s Hamas government estimates that nearly 70 percent of the roughly 40, 000 dead are women ( about 11, 000 ) or children ( at least 16, 300 ).
Several UN agencies, including the agency in charge of Palestinian refugees ( UNRWA ), have said the ministry’s figures are credible.
No one ever really challenged these figures, according to the organization’s chief in October, Philippe Lazzarini, who cited the five, six cycles of conflict in the Gaza Strip as evidence.
According to a study by the British medical journal The Lancet, 186, 000 deaths were directly or indirectly related to the humanitarian crisis that Gaza has brought about.
The war in Gaza was triggered by the October 7 attack by Hamas, which resulted in the deaths of 1, 198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
