Gaza ministry revises down figures for women and children confirmed killed

Gaza’s Hamas-run ministry of health has revised down figures for the number of women and children confirmed killed in the conflict in the coastal strip.

The revised totals, which first appeared on the website of the UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha), were seized on as proof by pro-Israel media and commentators that the UN had quietly reassessed civilian casualty rates. However, Ocha told the Guardian that the revised figures had been produced by the Hamas ministry and had not been verified by the UN.

The Guardian also understands that the new figures provided by the ministry relate to 24,686 “fully documented cases” out of an estimated 34,622 deaths recorded by 30 April, suggesting an ongoing verification process.

According to those criteria, 7,797 children – rather than 14,500 – are listed as confirmed killed, while confirmed fatalities among women account for 4,959 deaths, rather than 9,500, as previously recorded. As such, the new confirmed total of women and children killed stands at 12,756.

jordanlund,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

This revision was almost immediately debunked and retracted which is why the other article was removed and why I’m removing this one as well.

reuters.com/…/un-says-gaza-death-toll-still-over-…

U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq said the ministry’s figures - cited regularly by the U.N. its reporting on the seven-month-long conflict - now reflected a breakdown of the 24,686 deaths of “people who have been fully identified.”

“There’s about another 10,000 plus bodies who still have to be fully identified, and so then the details of those - which of those are children, which of those are women - that will be re-established once the full identification process is complete,” Haq told reporters in New York.

Israel last week questioned why the figures for the deaths of women and children has suddenly halved.

Haq said those figures were for identified bodies - 7,797 children, 4,959 women, 1,924 elderly, and 10,006 men - adding: “The Ministry of Health says that the documentation process of fully identifying details of the casualties is ongoing.”

Same number of dead, the unidentified bodies are just as dead as the identified ones.

antifa,

Qasim’s take on this:

mastodon.social/

PseudorandomNoise,
@PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.world avatar

He’s commenting on bad reporting, and in particular a confusion that no one in this thread here seems to be making.

SuddenDownpour,

Did the previous thread get deleted?

Anyhow, this is the most relevant part to me:

Farhan Haq, a UN spokesperson, said the new smaller numbers reflected those bodies which had been fully identified. The bigger figures included corpses for whom identification has so far not been completed.

This is the most cautious body count, which you necessarily know has to be far below the actual number of casualties because neither health workers, nor UN officials, nor Hamas has the means to clear the rubble in destroyed and occupied cities and look for corpses. We won’t know the total extent of deaths in this war until someone has the capacity to conduct a complete census of the remaining Gazans, and that number is compared to the census immediately prior to the conflict. All in all, the headline is really misleading, because “estimated total casualties” and “fully identified casualties” are two different statistics.

jordanlund,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

The previous thread was deleted because this statement was almost immediately proven false and retracted. I’ll remove this one as well.

Tryptaminev,

To but it more bluntly: If you find 10 little arms in a mass grave you can safely assume that they belong to at least 5 different children.

But if only three of these arms can be identified to a child by a wrist-band or some remaining clothes that is the revised number we are talking about.

gedaliyah,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

This seems to be an indication that Israel has been a lot more precise in targeting fighters than I thought. I don’t see another explanation for the huge disparity between men and women.

aleph, (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

I still wouldn’t call it “precise” in the slightest.

Even assuming that this ratio remains constant after the remaining 10,000 unidentified bodies are accounted for, men of fighting age only account for 40% of those being killed and not all of those will be actual Hamas fighters.

gedaliyah,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

The typical combatant to civilian casualty rate in embedded urban warfare is about 1/4. Obviously any civilian death is tragic, but it is a reality of war.

NoneOfUrBusiness,

It's "fully identified" casualties, not all casualties. The number of dead women and children hasn't changed.

Tryptaminev,

The disparity between men and women in the identifying efforts is quite simple.

When a men is killed, chance is he was out trying to secure food for his family, carrying wounded to hospitals or trying to rescue people from under the rubble. The family then often was in a different place and survived.

When a women and children are killed they were probably at home/in a refugee camp/ on the run and the entire core family is killed and there is no one to refer to for identification anymore.

gregorum,

for full clarification:

The United Nations on Monday clarified that the overall number of fatalities in Gaza tallied by the Ministry of Health in Gaza remains unchanged, at more than 35,000, since the war broke out between Israel and Hamas on October 7.

The clarification comes after the UN humanitarian agency OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) published a report on May 8 with revised data regarding the number of Palestinian casualties in the war. The UN agency in its report reduced the number of women and children believed to have been killed in the war by nearly half.

The number was reduced because the UN says it is now relying on the number of deceased women and children whose names and other identifying details have been fully documented, rather than the total number of women and children killed. The ministry says bodies that arrive at hospitals get counted in the overall death count.

UN says total number of deaths in Gaza remains unchanged after controversy over revised data

PseudorandomNoise,
@PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.world avatar

At the end of the day I don’t think this really changes the conversation substantially (if at all), but it’s always important to ensure the right facts are out there for discussion

FuglyDuck,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

Keep in mind, though, it’s an active war zone with almost zero infrastructure. Confirming deaths is almost impossible. Between the sheer number buried under buildings or otherwise unable to get to whatever passes for medical aid, and how frequently what is found is basically unidentifiable…

There’s a lot of dead people being excluded

Tryptaminev,

Important. This is not the number of probable deaths. The number of probable deaths lies as over 45.000 as it includes people under the rubble, very very very likely dead.

The 35.000 includes all bodies found.

The now “revised” number includes all bodies for which the person is identified, so we know it is “Mohamed Abu-Qadr, 6 years old” and not just “unknown child, between 5 and 7 years old”

PseudorandomNoise,
@PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.world avatar

You got any kind of source on that extra 10k of unidentified bodies? That’s a big number to just throw around.

NoneOfUrBusiness,

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestinians-dig-to-retrieve-bodies-buried-in-rubble-in-northern-gaza/3205405

There are better sources but I couldn't be assed to find a way around paywalls; they'll appear if you look it up.

DolphinMath,

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