Gaza City, Gaza Strip – The ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict that ignited on October 7 has sparked intense controversy over the reported number of casualties in Gaza. The Hamas-controlled health ministry claims the death toll has surpassed 30,000, without distinguishing between civilians and combatants.
Past instances of violence in the Gaza Strip have seen reported death figures from Gazan authorities aligning closely with estimates from the UN or Israeli Defense Forces, although disputes have arisen regarding the breakdown between civilian and combatant deaths. However, the current conflict has presented a unique challenge in data collection, as detailed in a recent report from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Unlike previous conflicts where official hospital records formed the basis of casualty figures, the current war has seen a shift towards relying on information from what the Health Ministry terms as “reliable media sources” and submissions from Gazan citizens through a Google Form. As of now, authorities claim there have been a total of 32,414 deaths, with 54 percent sourced from hospital records and 45 percent from other channels.
A publication in Lancet in December argued against claims of inflated mortality reporting by the Gaza Ministry of Health, asserting that comparisons with a database of UNRWA worker deaths did not show significant discrepancies. However, data provided by UNRWA to The Telegraph suggests otherwise, revealing notable differences between the two datasets and raising questions about the accuracy of reporting by Gazan authorities amid the conflict.
The UNRWA dataset covering the period from October 7 to January 4 documents the deaths of 150 UNRWA workers in Gaza, with half of the fatalities occurring in the weeks following October 7 before the Israeli military intervention. Notably, the data shows that men make up a disproportionate percentage of the deaths, accounting for 62 percent despite representing only 41 percent of UNRWA staff in Gaza.