The Gaza Ministry of Health denies the manipulation of death numbers

At the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, Alam Hirzola quit with a gloomy task: registering the death of his wife and two children of his mourning cousin.

His family brought the bodies here to an electric rick or tuk-tuk. They found them in their home in the eastern city of Gaza after Israeli shelling got into a family house. Osma Hirzala, 5, Maar, and 3, were killed.

“The hospital asked their full names and identification numbers,” Alam explains, referring to the numbers that all Palestinians are given to the register of the population managed by Israel.

“They gave us a document to confirm that they were fascinated and told us to return to the death certificate. Now we do not know where to bury them because the cemetery is in the areas under the control of Israel.”

At least 51,266 people have been killed in 18 months since the war began, according to the Ministry of Health Hamas, almost a third of the dead under the age of 18.

Israel has repeatedly challenged the accuracy of the Palestinian death rate – in terms of the total number, and, in particular, a demographic breakdown – claiming that it is used as Hamas propaganda. The figures refer to the UN attribution and the media widely.

The list does not distinguish civilians and members of the Palestinian armed groups who died in the war and Israel accused Hamas of overestimating percentage of women and children.

Recently, several media reports have raised questions about the reliability of statistics, emphasizing the anomalies between August and October 2024 and March 2025. The reports focused on as about 3,000 people, originally defined as deaths, were removed from later revised lists.

Gazana Al-Vahid’s health official refused the BBC that the victims had disappeared or that there was not enough transparency, insisting: “The Ministry of Health operates to obtain accurate data with high authority.

“There is a greater check and revision of the list in each detached list. We cannot say that the Ministry of Health deletes names. This is not the removal process, but this is a process of revision and checks.”

So, how are statistics collected and how accurate are they?

By the first months of this war, the number of people who died in Gaza was calculated from the counting of bodies who arrived at the hospital – as did Osma Hirzala and her children.

Doctors can enter the data for all deaths into a centralized computer system, which was founded in the Ministry of Health at Al-Shifa Hospital, with a backup at al-Rantis Hospital.

However, since the conditions became more chaotic and medical places were repeatedly attacked, this method became less reliable. During the war, Israel states that he is aimed at the hospital – who defended the status according to international law – because Hamas used them to hide their fighters and infrastructure – what the armed group denies.

Since the beginning of 2024, Gazanne’s health officials have presented online forms that relatives could use to report their loved ones dead or missing.

According to Mr. Vahidi, the head of the Ministry of Health statistics, most of the names recently removed from the official list in the new check process were initially presented using these forms. He says the names that are removed can later be added back

“The Law Committee was set up, and it is considering all the cases,” says Mr. Vahid. “To ensure authority, we check the data so that they are accurate.”

During the investigation of the court committee, some people died of natural reasons – not directly from the war. When gasans die from lack of treatment, malnutrition or hyperthermia, Mr. Vahid states: “These cases are indirect and are not added to the lists.”

Other persons were mistakenly listed as dead, but then found that there were among the thousands of gases in Israel prison.

Mr -n Wahidi confirms that in August, and then in October, more than 3,000 names were removed from the list, saying it was precautionary precautions.

For some pro -Israeli groups such as Media WatchDog, an honest report was a strong testimony of “intentional manipulations rather than an honest error”.

There was a widespread presumption that only tested names were included in published internet writings.

“It seems that they actually update the lists more in real time as additional information is,” says Professor Mike Spring from the Royal College Holloe, the chairman of every number of losses, an independent organization in the monitoring of civic cases. “We had to consider previous lists as a little more temporary than I thought.”

However, he says that he does not find attempts to mislead medical officials and views changes as a “big cleaning operation”.

He emphasizes that the latest modifications in the list led to a slight increase in the percentage of adult men among the dead, resisting the idea that the initial inclusion of 3000 plus was made in an attempt to exaggerate the share of women and children.

The Gaza Department of Health states that it has also recently conducted a data check on its official list of mortators for mistakes and inaction.

When death was registered by friends or neighbors, they said they often did not know the identification numbers of the killed or their full names – the names of the father and grandfather. In some cases, this led to the wrong people marked by the dead.

Thousands of bodies that are still under the rubble remaining Israeli air strikes, as well as about 900, which are not currently included in the list of the Ministry of Health, the ministry said.

However, the recent two -month ceasefire – which allowed hundreds of thousands of displaced gaskets to return to what remained in their homes – saw that nearly 800 corpses were discovered, identified and registered.

In late January, BBC shoot workers from the Hamas Civil Defense Agency When they began to extract human remains that were left in Vadi Gaza for months – also known as the corridor – after pulling out Israeli forces.

In the absence of DNA testing, each corpse received a serial number. Long forms were filled to enter the bones and clothes collected to try to identify the dead.

“We are looking for distinctive personal belongings: a clock, necklace or earring. If we are looking for bodies, it is very possible that we will find a driver’s license or ID,” said the garden -cholifa, who headed the team.

“Even a broken tooth can be a distinctive sign that will help the family recognize the missing loved one.”

Since the restoration of Israel’s military offensive on March 18, the number of killed, increased daily.

Israel periodically estimates the number of Palestinian fighters killed. Earlier this year, he estimated that 20,000 Hamas and Palestinian Jihad members were among the dead. In mid -April last month there were “more than 100 target liquidations”.

Israel does not represent its figures for the death of civilians in Gaza and officially disputes none of the names in the list of local health ministries.

The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas ruled a cross -border attack on southern Israel, killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians and took about 250 people in captivity. Since then, Israeli military has claimed that 408 of his soldiers have been killed in battle.

International journalists, including the BBC, is blocked by Israel on its own, so they cannot check the numbers on both sides.

We are more based on local Palestinian journalists who work with us to access information about the deadly attacks – to interview witnesses, as well as to visit bombs and hospital muzzles on the shooting shots that divide with us.

Overall, the figures that have died over the last year and a year and a half from the previous rounds of fighting in the decade of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and nevertheless, at the moment there is no end for the war.