Israeli forces unleashed air and ground bombing of Hamas in the Gaza Strip following the ruling Islamist group’s cross-border incursion into the enclave on October 7.

At least Since then, 16,015 Palestinians have died. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, while Israeli estimates indicate that Hamas’s invasion of Israel killed 1,200 people.

Aid agencies warn that the humanitarian disaster in Gaza is worsening by the hour, and most of them 2.3 million residents were left homeless and trapped in the enclave a tiny and besieged coastal area with little food, water, medical care, fuel or shelter.

With basic infrastructure destroyed, telephone and internet services frequently interrupted, and several health statisticians dead or missing, fears are growing that health authorities in the Gaza Strip can no longer accurately count the number of victims.

How is the number of victims currently calculated?

In the first six weeks of the war, Gaza hospital morgues sent data to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health’s main data collection center at Al-Shifa Hospital. lOfficials used Excel spreadsheets to track the names, ages and identification numbers of the deceased. and handed them over to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah, which is part of the Palestinian Authority (PA) exercising limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

But Omar Hussein Ali, director of the ministry’s emergency operations center in Ramallah, said that of the four officials running the Shifa data center, one was killed in an airstrike on the hospital and three others were missing when Israeli forces seized power. a facility they believed to be a suspected Hamas hideout.

“The type of victim registration required to understand what is happening is becoming increasingly complex. information infrastructure, Existing health systems are being systematically destroyed.“Said Hamit Dardagan of the Iraqi company Body Count, created during the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Since the week-long truce was suspended on December 1, casualty figures that were usually published daily became irregular. The latest information from the Gaza Ministry of Health was provided on Monday by its spokesman Ashraf Al-Kidra, raising the issue. death toll 15,899but did not give his usual press conference.

Reuters has since been unable to contact him. Only two partial ministerial reports have been published, increasing the death toll based on the number of bodies taken to the two hospitals: 43 on Tuesday and 73 on Wednesday.

Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said on Tuesday that Gaza’s medical service was in a “catastrophic” stateIsraeli forces killed more than 250 people and detained at least 30.

Are the published casualty figures comprehensive?

No, experts told Reuters. “Our monitoring suggests that the figures provided by the Ministry of Health may be underestimated, since “This does not include the dead who did not reach hospitals or who may be lost under the rubble.” This was stated by a representative of the UN Human Rights Office.

“It is logical to assume that the figures presented are underestimated, they are underestimated,” he said. Nathaniel Raymond executive director of the Humanities Research Laboratory at the Yale School of Public Health, which has been counting deaths in armed conflict and natural disasters for more than 20 years.

A Palestinian Authority report dated Oct. 26 said at least 1,000 bodies could not be found or delivered to morgues, citing families interviewed by its staff in Gaza, in a stark and plausible example of the effects of war.in data collection and reporting“, according to an article in The Lancet.

The number of bodies feared to be buried under the rubble now numbers in the thousands. Much of the Gaza Civil Defense Force’s earth-moving equipment was destroyed by airstrikes. This was announced on Tuesday by Palestinian Authority Health Minister Al Kayla.

How reliable are the casualty figures to date?

Before the war, Gaza had reliable population statistics (2017 census and recent UN studies) and health information systems that performed better than most countries in the Middle East, they told Reuters public health experts.

Una Campbell, professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: Palestinian health authorities are trusted for a long time with its own methods of maintaining basic statistics and tracking deaths in general, and not just during the war. They are trusted by UN agencies.

“Palestine’s data collection capacity is professional, and many ministry staff have been trained in the United States. They work hard to ensure statistical significance,” said Raymond of Yale University.

On October 26, the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health released a report. 212 pages containing the names, ages and identification numbers of 7,028 dead Palestinians. in the airstrikes after US President Joe Biden questioned the casualty figures.

Campbell and two other scientists analyzed the data for the report, published in the medical journal Lancet on November 26, and concluded that there was no obvious reason to doubt its reliability. “We find it implausible that these patterns (of mortality rates) are due to data falsification,” the researchers wrote.

Since then, the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health did not publish a similar detailed reportreflecting weakening ties with the Gaza Strip.

What does Israel say?

A senior Israeli official told reporters on Monday that about a third of those killed so far in the Gaza Strip were enemy combatants, putting the number at less than 10,000 but more than 5,000, without specifying how that was achieved. The official said the total number is about Palestinian authorities reported 15,000 dead as of Monday. which do not destroy the ratio between civilians and combatants are “more or less” correct.

Human rights groups and researchers say the large number of civilians is linked to the use of heavy weapons, including so-called “bunker bombs” aimed at destroying Hamas’ strategic network and tunnels, as well as attacks on residential areas in which, according to Israel, Hamas hid militant bases, missile sites and weapons inside and under residential buildings and hospitals.

What is the structure of dead children and adults?

The United Nations and Israeli and Palestinian law define a child as someone under the age of 18, although some Hamas fighters are considered teenagers.

The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry said on Tuesday that about 70% of those killed in the Gaza Strip were women and children under 18 years of age. but has not published any breakdown by age category since its Oct. 26 report.

According to an article in the Lancet journal, data from the ministry’s report showed that 11.5% of deaths recorded between October 7 and 26 occurred in children aged 0 to 4 years. 11.5% from 5 to 9 years old, 10.7% from 10 to 14 years old and 9.1% from 15 to 19 years old.

“There was a clear peak among men aged 30 to 34, possibly reflecting exposure to combatants or civilians (for example, first responders at blast sites, journalists and people going out to fetch water and food for their families).” , says the report.

Could the count become a victim of war?

The new phase of the Israeli offensive, which extends to the southern half of the Gaza Strip from December 1, further reduced the ability to collect reliable data The death toll was announced on Tuesday by Richard Pieperkorn, the World Health Organization’s envoy to the Gaza Strip.

“As we all know, we usually receive (data) from the Ministry of Health, and for several days now they have been based more on estimates, it is much more difficult for them,” he added.

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The fact that a previously efficient cohort of healthcare technocrats it’s almost impossible to find work This is yet another heartbreaking testament to the devastating effects of war.

“It’s a terrible sign when you reach a point like in Sudan where you don’t even have a record of death. This in itself shows us humanitarian workers that we’re at our worst“Said Raymond from Yale University.