This video grab from AFPTV shows an aerial view of destroyed buildings in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on 22 April 2024 amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and them militant group Hamas. (AFPTV/AFP)
- The struggle to maintain an accurate count of casualties
in Gaza has intensified, with the death toll surpassing 40 000 after more than
10 months of conflict. - Efforts to track the dead are complicated by the
destruction of infrastructure and questioning of the credibility of figures by
Israel and initially by US President Joe Biden, though UN agencies regard them
as credible. - Gaza’s health ministry has developed a detailed process
for recording deaths, utilizing both digital databases and manual recording
methods.
With Gaza largely in ruins after more than 10 months of war,
the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry has struggled to count the death
toll, which on Thursday surpassed 40 000.
Israel has repeatedly questioned the credibility of the
daily figures put out by the ministry and US President Joe Biden did so too in
the early stages of the war.
But several United Nations agencies that operate in Gaza
have said the figures are credible and they are frequently cited by
international organisations.
Data collection
Two AFP correspondents witnessed health facilities enter
deaths in the ministry’s database.
Gaza health officials first identify bodies by visual
recognition from a relative or friend, or by recovering personal items.
The deceased’s details, including name, gender, birth date
and ID number, are then entered in the health ministry’s digital database.
If bodies are unrecognisable or unclaimed, staff record the
death under a number, noting all available information.
Any distinguishing marks that may help with later
identification, whether personal items or a birthmark, are collected and
photographed.
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Central registry
Gaza’s health ministry has outlined its procedures for
compiling the death toll.
In public hospitals under the direct supervision of the
territory’s Hamas government, the “personal information and identity
number” of every Palestinian killed during the war are entered in the
hospital’s database as soon as they are pronounced dead.
The data is then sent to the ministry’s central registry on
a daily basis.
For deaths in private hospitals and clinics, information is
recorded on a form that must be sent to the ministry within 24 hours to be
included in the central registry, a ministry statement said.
The ministry’s “information centre” then verifies
the entries to “ensure they do not contain any duplicates or
mistakes”, before saving them in the database, the statement added.
Gaza residents are also encouraged by Palestinian
authorities to report any deaths in their families on a designated government
website. The data is used for the ministry’s verifications.
The ministry is staffed with civil servants that answer to
the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority as well as to the Hamas government in
Gaza.
‘High correlation’
An investigation conducted by Airwars, an NGO focused on the
impact of war on civilians, analysed the data entries for 3 000 of the dead and
found “a high correlation” between the ministry’s data and what
Palestinian civilians reported online, with 75 percent of publicly reported
names also appearing on the ministry’s list.
The study found that the ministry’s figures had become
“less accurate” as the war dragged on, a development it attributed to
the heavy damage to health infrastructure resulting from the war.
For instance, at southern Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, one of the
few still at least partly functioning, only 50 out of 400 computers still work,
its director Atef al-Hout told AFP.
Israeli authorities frequently criticise the ministry’s
figures for failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians. But
neither the army nor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deny the scale
of the overall toll.
The press office of Gaza’s Hamas government had previously
estimated that nearly 70 percent of the roughly 40 000 dead are women (about 11
000) or children (at least 16 300).
Several UN agencies, including the agency in charge of
Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), have said the ministry’s figures are credible.
“In the past – the five, six cycles of conflict in the
Gaza Strip – these figures were considered as credible and no one ever really
challenged these figures,” the agency’s chief Philippe Lazzarini said in
October.
In a letter published by British medical review The Lancet
in July, a group of researchers estimated that 186 000 or more deaths could
eventually be attributed to the war in Gaza, based on statistical projections
using the Ministry of Health figures. Their estimate would include not only
those killed directly by the fighting, but also deaths as a result of the humanitarian
crisis triggered by the war.
The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s 7 October attack on
Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1 198 people, mostly civilians,
according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
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