An investigative report has disclosed that the health ministry in Gaza has eliminated thousands of names from its official list of fatalities, as the majority of these individuals either passed away from natural causes or were incarcerated. This raises the question: can we rely on the accuracy of these figures?
As the conflict between Israel and Hamas intensifies, recent reports indicate that Gaza’s health ministry has removed 1,852 individuals from its official death toll since October. An investigative piece by Sky News reveals that these names were eliminated by agencies controlled by Hamas, as some of the individuals either passed away from natural causes or are alive but currently incarcerated.
Following these adjustments, the total number of reported fatalities in the coastal region now stands at 50,609. Notably, 97 percent of the names that were removed had been submitted through an online platform designed for families to report the deaths of loved ones whose bodies are unaccounted for.
Zaher Al Wahidi, the head of the statistics team at Gaza’s health ministry, informed Sky News that the removals were undertaken as a “precautionary measure,” and a judicial inquiry will be conducted for each case.
“We discovered that many individuals reported through the form died of natural causes,” Wahidi explained to the British news organization. “Some may have experienced a heart attack due to proximity to an explosion, or conditions in destroyed homes may have led to pneumonia or hypothermia. We do not attribute these cases to the war,” he added.
Wahidi also noted that some families submitted inaccurate claims, as certain names listed were found to be either imprisoned or missing, lacking sufficient evidence of having died in the conflict. The statistician from the Gaza health ministry indicated that some Palestinians may have been motivated to submit false claims due to the potential for government financial aid.
This is not the first instance of names being excluded from the official ministry death list; however, this particular removal is the most notable. Between August and September of the previous year, a total of 1,441 names were taken off the list, with 54% of these names coming from hospital morgue records instead of the online submissions. Wahidi informed Sky News that his team initiated a data audit after receiving complaints from individuals who were mistakenly listed as deceased while still alive.
Wahidi pointed out that 8% of those recorded as deceased in August have since been removed from the official death count. Nevertheless, many of these individuals were reinstated during a judicial inquiry.
The absence of a verification process was identified as the primary issue. Wahidi explained that until October, names submitted through the online form were incorporated into the official death registry without any judicial verification. Of the 1,295 individuals removed from the list, 474 were subsequently reinstated after proper validation.
“This certainly leads me to reassess the reliability of the earlier lists, placing them below my initial expectations,” stated Professor Michael Spagat, chair of Every Casualty Counts, an independent organization monitoring civilian casualties.
“They essentially indicated that these entries were provisional and subject to investigation. It is possible that no one, including us, fully grasped this message, but they were not concealing it either,” he added.
