The Gaza Health Ministry denies the manipulation of deaths data

At the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, Alam Hirzala, he reconciled with a gloomy task: registering the death of his wife and two children of his grieving cousin.

His family brought the bodies here to an electric rickshaw or here and here. They were found in their house in the eastern city of Gaza after the Israeli firing hit the family home. Asma Hirzala, Maya, 5 and Abdullah, 3 years old, were killed.

“The hospital asked for their full names and the number of identification numbers,” Alam explains, citing numbers that all Palestinians are given in a population register governed by Israel.

“They gave us paper to confirm that they were martyrs and told us to return to the death certificate. Now we do not know where to bury them, as the cemeteries are in areas under Israeli control.”

At least 51 266 people were killed in the 18 months since the Gaza War began, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health, with almost one-third of the dead under the age of 18 years.

Israel has repeatedly disputed the accuracy of the list of Palestinian victims – with regard to the total number and more special demographic collapse – claims to be used as a propaganda of Hamas. The numbers are cited by attribution, by UN agencies and widely in the media.

The list does not distinguish between civilians and members of the Palestinian armed groups that were killed in the war, and Israel has accused Hamas of inflating women and children percentages.

Recently, several media reports have raised questions about the reliability of statistics, emphasizing the anomalies between the victims of victims of victims of August and October 2024. The reports focus on how about 3,000 people names, originally identified as victims, have been removed from later revised lists.

Gazan’s health official has denied the BBC that the victims have disappeared or that there is no transparency, insisting: “The Ministry of Health is working for having accurate data with great reliability.

“In every list that is shared, there is a greater check and review of the list. We cannot say that the health ministry removes names. This is not a process of removal, more recently it is a process of review and verification.”

So how are the statistics collected and how accurate are they?

Until the first months of this war, the number of gas killed in Gaza was calculated from a number of bodies arriving in hospitals – like those of Asma Hirzala and her children.

Medics can register data on all deaths in a centralized computer system, which is based at the Ministry of Health at Al-Shifa Hospital, with a backup at Al-Ratii Hospital.

However, as the conditions became more haotic and medical sites repeatedly attack, this method became less reliable. During the war, Israel said he had directed the hospitals – who had defended the status of international law – because Hamas used them to hide his fighters and infrastructure – something that the armed group denies.

Since the beginning of 2024, Gazan health officials have introduced online forms that relatives could use to report their loved ones or disappeared.

According to G -H Wahidi, the statistics leader at the Ministry of Health, most names that were recently removed from the official list as part of a new process of checking were originally presented using these forms. He says the names that have been downloaded can later be added back

“A judicial committee has been set up and it is considering all the cases received,” says G -n Wahidi. “To guarantee trust, we check the data so that they are accurate.”

During the investigations of the Judicial Committee, it was found that some people died for natural reasons – not directly because of the war. When the gas dies from a lack of medical treatment, malnutrition or hyperthermia, d -Hahides explain “These cases are indirect and are not added to the lists.”

Other faces were mistakenly listed as dead, but then found to have been among thousands of gazan, imprisoned by Israel.

G -Whidi confirms that in August and after October, a total of over 3000 names were removed from the list, saying that this was a precaution in anticipation of full checks.

For some pro-Israel groups, such as Media Watchdog Honestreporting, this was a strong indication of “deliberate manipulation, not an honest mistake.”

There was a widespread presumption that only the names were published published only names were included.

“It seems that they are actually updating the lists more in real time, as more information appears,” says Professor Mike Spass by Royal Holloway College, chairman of every number of casualties, an independent organization for civil victim surveillance. “We had to look at previous lists as a little more timely than I guessed.”

However, he says he does not find experience from health officials to mislead and see changes as a “major cleaning operation”.

He points out that the latest modifications in the list have led to a slight increase in the percentage of elderly men among those killed, counteracting the idea that the initial inclusion of names of 3000 plus was made in an attempt to exaggerate the proportion of women and children.

The Gaza Ministry of Health says it has recently audited data on its official list of victims of hospital morgues for errors and gaps.

When death is registered by friends or neighbors, it is written that they often did not know the identification numbers of their killed or their full names – which include the names of the father and grandfather. In some cases, this has led to the fact that sinful people were marked as dead.

Thousands of bodies that are still under the ruins left by Israeli air strikes, as well as about 900 that have not been identified, are not currently included in the Ministry of Health’s list, the ministry says.

However, the recent cessation of the fire – which allowed hundreds of thousands of displaced gazan to return to the rest of their homes – saw that nearly 800 corpses were extracted, identified and registered.

At the end of January, BBC filmed workers from the Civil Protection Agency, managed by Hamas As they began to extract human remains, which had been left in Vadi Gaza for months – also known as the corridor of Netsarim – after extracting from the Israeli forces.

Without testing of DNA available in gas, each corpse received a serial number. Long forms were filled in to register the bones and clothing collected to try to identify the dead.

“We are looking for distinctive personal belongings: a clock, a necklace or an earring. When looking for the bodies, it is very possible to find a driver’s license or ID,” said Sameh Khalifa, who runs the team.

“Even a broken tooth can be a hallmark that will help the family recognize a missing loved one.”

As the resumption of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza on March 18, the killed numbers rise daily.

Israel periodically evaluates the number of Palestinian fighters killed. Earlier this year, she estimated that 20,000 Hamas members and Palestinian Islamic jihad were among the dead. In mid -April, it is said that in the last month there were “more than 100 targeted eliminations”.

Israel does not provide its figures for the death of civilians in Gaza and has not officially challenged any of the names in the list of local health ministerial accidents.

The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led a cross -border attack on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mainly civilians and bringing about 250 people captured in Gaza. Since then, the Israeli military has said that 408 of its soldiers have been killed in battle.

International journalists, including the BBC, are blocked by Israel to enter the gas independently, so they are unable to check the numbers from both sides.

We rely largely on local Palestinian journalists working with us to have access to information on deadly attacks – interviewing witnesses, as well as a visit to bombs and hospital duty sites, to share with us.

Overall, the numbers killed in the last year and a half dwarf by previous battles of battles in decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and yet, for the moment, there is no end to the war.