RAMALLAH, West Bank/BEIRUT, Dec 7 (Portal) – Israeli forces launched an air and ground attack against Hamas in Gaza following a cross-border rampage by the Islamist group ruling the enclave on Oct. 7. Since then, at least 16,015 Palestinians have been killed. Then, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, 1,200 people died in Hamas’ invasion of Israel, according to Israeli figures.
Aid agencies warn that Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe is worsening by the hour, with most of its 2.3 million people homeless and trapped in a tiny, embattled coastal enclave with little food, water, medical supplies, fuel or safe accommodation is available.
With basic infrastructure destroyed, telephone and internet services frequently disrupted, and a number of health statisticians killed or missing, concerns are growing that health authorities in Gaza will no longer be able to accurately count the number of victims.
How have the accident tolls been determined so far?
During the first six weeks of the war, hospital morgues across the Gaza Strip sent numbers to the Ministry of Health’s main collection point at Al Shifa Hospital. Officials used Excel spreadsheets to log the names, ages and ID numbers of the dead and sent them to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, part of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
But Omar Hussein Ali, director of the ministry’s emergency center in Ramallah, said that of the four officials who ran the Shifa data center, one died in an airstrike on the hospital, while the other three were missing when Israeli forces took over Compounds seized an alleged Hamas hideout.
“The type of victim recording required to understand what is going on is becoming increasingly difficult. “The information infrastructure and existing health systems are being systematically destroyed,” said Hamit Dardagan of Iraq Body Count, which was founded during the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The organization has also tried to keep tabs on casualties in the Gaza Strip, using Health Ministry data and monitoring social media and other media reports of deaths.
Since the collapse of a week-long ceasefire on December 1, updates on casualty figures, usually issued daily, have become erratic. The latest update from the Gaza Health Ministry came from spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra on Monday, raising the death toll to 15,899.
He did not hold his regular press conference on Tuesday. He did not comment for about 48 hours until late Wednesday when he sent a WhatsApp message to journalists that did not include a daily report of casualties but said Al-Ahli al-Arabi Hospital in Gaza City was with them The injured are overwhelmed and “the wounded bleed to death.”
Portal could not immediately verify the report.
Based on the number of bodies brought to two hospitals – 43 on Tuesday, 73 on Wednesday – only two partial reports were released by the ministry, adding to the death toll.
Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said on Tuesday that health services in the Gaza Strip were in a “catastrophic” state; Over 250 employees were killed by Israeli forces and at least 30 were arrested.
ARE THE PUBLISHED ACCIDENT FIGURES COMPLETE?
No, experts told Portal.
“Our monitoring suggests that the figures provided by the Ministry of Health may be too low as they do not include fatalities who did not reach hospitals or who could be lost under the rubble,” the UN human rights office spokesman said.
“It’s a logical assumption that the reported numbers are underestimates and are low,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, who has studied death tolls in armed conflicts and natural disasters, more than 20 Years.
The October 26 Palestinian Authority report said at least 1,000 bodies could not be recovered or taken to morgues. It cites families interviewed by Palestinian Authority staff in Gaza – a clear and plausible example of the war’s impact “on data collection and reporting,” says the Lancet article.
The number of bodies buried under the rubble is now feared to be in the thousands and much of the Gaza Civil Defense Force’s digging equipment has been destroyed in airstrikes, Palestinian Authority Health Minister al-Kaila said on Tuesday.
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How credible are the previous accident figures?
Gaza had solid population statistics before the war – based on a 2017 census and more recent UN surveys – and well-functioning health information systems that were better than most Middle Eastern countries, public health experts told Portal.
Oona Campbell, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said Palestinian health authorities have long enjoyed credibility with their methods of keeping basic statistics and tracking deaths in general, not just in wartime. UN organizations rely on them.
“Palestinian data collection capabilities are professional and many ministry employees have been trained in the United States. They work hard to ensure statistical accuracy,” said Raymond of Yale University.
On October 26, the PA Health Ministry released a 212-page report containing the names, ages and ID numbers of 7,028 Palestinians it said died in airstrikes – after US President Joe Biden raised doubts about the casualty figures had.
Campbell and two other scientists analyzed the data for a Nov. 26 report in the Lancet medical journal and concluded there was no obvious reason to doubt its validity. “We believe it is unlikely that these patterns (of mortality rates) would arise from data falsification,” the researchers wrote.
The PA Health Ministry has not issued a similarly detailed report since then, citing declining communications with Gaza.
WHAT DOES ISRAEL SAY?
A senior Israeli official told reporters on Monday that around a third of those killed so far in Gaza were enemy combatants, putting the number at fewer than 10,000 but more than 5,000, without elaborating on how that estimate was arrived at. The official said Monday’s total of around 15,000 deaths given by Palestinian authorities, which did not break the figure down by civilians and combatants, was “more or less” correct.
Human rights groups and researchers say the high civilian casualties are due to the use of heavy weapons – including so-called “bunker buster” bombs aimed at destroying Hamas’s strategic tunnel network – and attacks on neighborhoods where the According to Israel, Hamas has hidden militant bases and rocket launch pads and weapons inside and under apartment blocks and hospitals.
What is the distribution of children killed compared to adults killed?
The United Nations and Israeli and Palestinian law define a child as someone under 18, although some Hamas fighters are believed to be teenagers.
The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry said Tuesday that about 70% of Gaza’s deaths were women and children under 18, but has not released a breakdown by age category since its Oct. 26 report.
The Lancet article said the ministry report data showed that 11.5% of deaths recorded between October 7 and 26 were children aged between 0 and 4 years, 11.5% between 5 and 9 years, 10 .7% between 10 and 14 years and 9.1% between 15 and 15 years 19.
“A significant peak occurred among men aged 30 to 34, which may reflect exposure to combatants or civilians (e.g., first responders at bomb sites, journalists, and people searching for water and food for their families),” it said.
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COULD THE DEATH NUMBERS NOW BECOME A LOSS OF WAR?
The new phase of Israel’s offensive, expanding into the southern half of the Gaza Strip starting Dec. 1, has further limited the scope for collecting reliable data on the death toll, Richard Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s Gaza envoy, said on Tuesday.
“As we all know, we normally get (data) from the Ministry of Health and these have been much more based on estimates for a few days now, it is much more difficult for them,” he said.
Experts said the fact that it was becoming nearly impossible for a previously efficient cohort of health technocrats to work was another harrowing indication of the war’s consequences.
“It’s a terrible sign when you get to the point where, like in Sudan, you don’t even have a death register. That alone tells us responders that this is a worst-case scenario,” said Raymond of Yale University.
Reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Maggie Fick in Beirut; additional reporting by James Mackenzie in Jerusalem, Jana Choukeir in Dubai, Emma Farge in Geneva, Helen Reid in London and Adam Makary in Cairo; Writing by Maggie Fick; Edited by Mark Heinrich and Miral Fahmy
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