How the dead are counted in Gaza
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![How the dead are counted in Gaza](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0c303067-2e54-401d-9118-732d3e960776.png?format=jpg&thumbnail=256)
By BBC Verify team
BBC News
In any warzone, counting the dead is a challenge. Gaza is no different.
As battles there intensify, the chaotic situation - with bombardment by Israeli forces, on-the-ground fighting, communications blackouts, fuel shortages and crumbling infrastructure - makes getting accurate information on the numbers of people who have died extremely demanding.
And Palestinian officials have said there are now "significant difficulties" in obtaining updated information because of the interruption of communications in the Gaza Strip.
The health ministry is Gaza's official source for death numbers - which it updates regularly. On Monday evening, it said 11,240 people had been killed, including 4,630 children, since the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October which prompted the current war.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
As battles there intensify, the chaotic situation - with bombardment by Israeli forces, on-the-ground fighting, communications blackouts, fuel shortages and crumbling infrastructure - makes getting accurate information on the numbers of people who have died extremely demanding.
A day after Mr Biden's dismissal of the numbers, the health ministry in Gaza provided more information, publishing an extensive list of names of all those who had been killed between 7 and 26 October.
Healthcare workers like Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a Médecins Sans Frontières plastic surgeon based in London who has been treating people at hospitals in Gaza City, are key to recording those figures.
Others who have scrutinised the health ministry's figures include economics professor Michael Spagat, from Royal Holloway, University of London - who chairs the charity Every Casualty Counts which studies death tolls in wars.
Ola Awad-Shakhshir, president of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, receives regular updates of deaths from Gaza.
When the BBC approached a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces about why they have cast doubt on the Gazan death figures it said the health ministry was a branch of Hamas and that any information provided by it should be "viewed with caution".
The original article contains 1,538 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 87%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
It's good that third party NGOs are verifying the counts. Hamas has a very strong incentive to maximize civilian deaths, and are doing their part to put them at risk by telling Gazans to stay in the evacuation zone, using them as human shields, putting their infrastructure in protected areas, and intentionally causing this war in the first place. They are not a trustworthy source. Even if these numbers are accurate they need to be verified.
(Hamas)
That's what the article is about
There's a CNN article where UNICEF states that the Gaza health ministry's numbers are accurate. Do I have to link it?
May as well post this for you to read also. (Though it would seem you didn't read the article you are replying to, so my hopes aren't high.)
One snippet out of a lengthy article.
Why news outlets and the U.N. rely on Gaza’s Health Ministry for death tolls
And another:
What is Gaza’s Ministry of Health and how does it calculate the war’s death toll?
Israeli mindset Dead babies (dead future Hamas) Dead pregnant women being cut open to save their babies and fail (dead Hamas baby maker) Dead male children (dead future Hamas) Etc...
The amount of brain twisting these people do to justify their bloodlust and dehumanize even the dead is not even surprising anymore, just annoying. Look for them in every post, all the way down and downvoted to hell. Not that votes matter.