Gaza City, Palestine – As the Israel-Hamas war rages on in Gaza since October 7, the accuracy of casualty numbers has become a contentious issue. The Hamas-run health ministry reports over 30,000 deaths, without differentiating between civilians and combatants. Previous conflicts in Gaza have seen Gazan authorities’ death tolls align closely with UN and IDF estimates, though distinctions between civilians and combatants have been debated.
The current conflict presents new challenges in data collection, as detailed in a recent report from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Unlike past wars where official hospital records formed the basis of death tolls, the current data relies heavily on information from “reliable media sources” and reports submitted by citizens through a Google Form. At present, authorities claim 32,414 deaths, with 54 percent from hospital records and 45 percent from other sources.
In a December publication in Lancet, concerns about inflated mortality reporting from the Gaza Ministry of Health were refuted, citing a comparison of total claimed deaths with a separate database of UNRWA worker fatalities. While not peer-reviewed, the study raised questions about discrepancies between various datasets, hinting at the conduct of the war and the accuracy of reporting by Gazan authorities.
Data shared with The Telegraph by UNRWA reveals significant differences between their casualty figures and those reported by Gaza authorities. Notably, the UNRWA dataset covering October 7 to January 4 documents the deaths of 150 UNRWA workers in Gaza, with half occurring before the Israeli land incursion into Gaza. Intriguingly, men accounted for 62 percent of these deaths, despite representing only 41 percent of UNRWA staff in Gaza. These discrepancies shed light on potential biases or inaccuracies in reporting during the conflict.