Several Western officials have expressed doubts in recent days about reports released by Hamas on the number of casualties since Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip began, figures that the United Nations, for its part, takes seriously. The Hamas Ministry of Health in Gaza releases daily reports, with the latest report this Friday reporting 7,326 deaths, including more than 3,000 children.
“We cannot independently verify Hamas’ statements and must therefore exercise a certain degree of caution,” a German Foreign Ministry spokesman, Christian Wagner, said on Friday. “Hamas is not a source of information for us,” said a deputy spokesman for the Chancellery, Wolfgang Büchner. Speaking outside Berlin this week, American President Joe Biden, who has steadfastly supported Israel since the start of the war, questioned the credibility of the authorities’ numbers in the Gaza Strip. “I am sure that innocent people were killed, (…) but I have no confidence in the numbers used by the Palestinians,” he said on Tuesday.
The United Nations cast doubts aside, recalling that the death toll published by Gaza authorities in previous conflicts had “never been disputed.” “In the last five or six conflict cycles in the Gaza Strip, these numbers were considered credible,” said the head of the UN refugee agency UNRWA at a press conference in Jerusalem. Philippe Lazzarini.