The Ministry of Health in Gaza denies the manipulation of death numbers

At the Shiva Hospital in Gaza City, Allam Herz Allah himself resigns for a dark mission: to record the death of the wife and two children from his sad cousin.

His family brought the bodies here on an electric or tuk tuk cart. They found them in their house in East Gaza City after the Israeli bombing struck the family’s home. The names of Herz Allah, Diamond, 5, and Abdullah, 3 years were killed.

“The hospital requested their full names and identity numbers,” Allam explains, referring to the numbers that all Palestinians are presented in a population record managed by Israel.

“They gave us a paper to confirm their martyrdom and told us to return to obtain the death certificate. Now we do not know where we go to bury them because the graves are in areas under Israeli control.”

At least 5,1266 people have been killed within 18 months since the Gaza war began, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health, with nearly a third of the deaths under the age of 18.

Israel has repeatedly stabbed the Palestinian death list – in terms of total numbers, in particular, demographic collapse – claiming that it is used as Hamas’s propaganda. The numbers are mentioned with support, by United Nations agencies and on a large scale in the media.

The list of civilians and members of the Palestinian armed groups who were killed in the war does not distinguish, and Israel has accused Hamas of amplifying the percentage of women and children.

Recently, many media reports raised questions about the reliability of statistics by highlighting the abnormal cases between the deaths of the deaths in August, October 2024 and March 2025. Reports focused on how about 3000 names were removed from the people who were originally identified as the death of subsequent revised lists.

The health official of Ghazan, Zahr Al -Wahidi, BBC, denied that the victims have disappeared or that there is a shortage of transparency, insisting: “The Ministry of Health is working on accurate data with high credibility.

“In every list that is shared, there is greater verification and review of the list. We cannot say that the Ministry of Health removes names. It is not a removal process, but rather a review and verification process.”

How are statistics collected and how accurate?

Until the first months of this war, the number of people who were killed in Gaza was calculated from the bodies of the count that reached hospitals – such as the names of Herz Allah and their children.

Persians can record data for all deaths to a central computer system, which was based in the office of the Ministry of Health at the Shiva Hospital, with support at the Ranzi Hospital.

However, since the conditions have become more chaotic, and medical sites were repeatedly ill, this method has become less reliable. During the war, Israel says it targeted hospitals – which protects a position under international law – because Hamas used it to hide its fighters and infrastructure – which the armed group denies.

Since the beginning of 2024, Ghazan’s health officials have provided online models that relatives can use to report their loved ones or missing.

According to Mr. Wahidi, Head of Statistics at the Ministry of Health, most of the names that were recently removed from the official list were presented as part of a new examination in the original using these models. He says that the names that have been removed may be added later again

“A judicial committee has been created and discussed on all the cases received,” says Mr. Wahidi. “To ensure credibility, we check the data so that it is accurate.”

During the investigations conducted by the Judicial Committee, it was found that some people died for natural reasons – not directly because of the war. When Ghazan dies from a lack of medical treatment, malnutrition, or high temperatures, Mr. Wahidi explains, “These cases are indirect and are not added to the menus.”

Other individuals were mistakenly listed as dead, but then they found that among the thousands of Ghazan was imprisoned by Israel.

Mr. Wahidi confirms that in August and after October, a total of more than 3000 names were removed from the list, saying that this was a precautionary measure awaiting full examination.

For some pro -Israel groups, such as monitoring of the sincere media, this was a strong indication of “deliberate manipulation, not a sincere mistake.”

There was a large -scale assumption that names were only examined in the lists published online.

“It seems that they are actually updating the lists in an actual time, and it also shows more information,” said Professor Mike Spacet of the Royal Holwai College, the head of the Victims Organization, the Independent Civil Campaign Organization. “We should have considered the previous lists a little more temporary than it assumed.”

However, he says he does not discover any attempt by health officials to mislead and sees changes as a “great cleaning process.”

It indicates that the latest amendments to the list led to a small increase in the percentage of adult males among those who were killed, while facing the idea that the original inclusion of the names of more than 3000 people was made in an attempt to exaggerate the percentage of women and children.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza says that it recently audited the data in the list of official deaths from hospital skills for errors and negligence.

When deaths were recorded by friends or neighbors, she says, often they did not know the numbers of the dead or their full names – which include the names of the father and grandfather. In some cases, this led to the distinction of the wrong people as a dead.

The ministry says that thousands of objects that are still under the rubble left by Israeli air strikes, as well as about 900 unidentified, are currently not currently listed in the list of the Ministry of Health.

However, the two -month ceasefire – which allowed hundreds of thousands of Ghazan displaced to return to the rest of their homes – witnessed nearly 800 bodies that are recovered, determined and recorded.

In late January, The BBC photographed the workers from the Hamas Civil Defense Agency When they started to recover the human remains that were left for several months in the Gaza Valley – also known as the Netzarim Pass – after withdrawing from the Israeli forces.

With the absence of a DNA test in Gaza, each corpse was granted a serial number. Long shapes have been filled with bone and clothes collected to try to identify the dead.

“We are looking for distinct personal property: an hour, necklace or earring. When we search the bodies, it is very likely that we will find a driver’s license or an identity card,” said Sumaya Khalifa, who led the team.

“Even broken teeth can be a distinctive sign that would help the family recognize a member of his lost family.”

Since the resumption of Israel’s military attack in Gaza on March 18, the deaths have risen daily.

Israel periodically estimates the number of Palestinian fighters who were killed. At the beginning of this year, she evaluated that 20,000 members of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were among the dead. In the middle of April, he said that there were “more than 100 targeted outputs” last month.

Israel does not offer its numbers to civilian deaths in Gaza and has not officially defied any of the names in the list of victims of the local Ministry of Health.

The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led a cross -border attack on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 people in captivity in Gaza. Since then, the Israeli army says 408 of its soldiers have been killed in the fighting.

International journalists, including the British Broadcasting Corporation, are prevented by Israel from entering Gaza independently, so they cannot verify personalities from either side.

We rely heavily on local Palestinian journalists who work with us to access information about deadly attacks – conducting interviews with witnesses in addition to visiting bombs and hospital supplies to photograph clips, which are shared with us.

In general, the numbers that were killed in the past year and a half of those who suffer from previous rounds of fighting in Israel’s Palestinian dispute were held for decades, however, at the present time, there is no end on the horizon.