Spokesperson says confusion results from Gaza health ministry’s new way of classifying those not yet fully identified

The UN has denied that the estimated death toll of women and children in the war in Gaza has been revised downward, pointing towards a confusion between the total numbers of dead bodies recorded, and the number of those who have so far been fully identified.

After the Gaza health ministry’s revised totals of those killed first appeared on the website of the UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha), they were quickly seized on as proof by pro-Israel media and commentators that the UN had previously been exaggerating the toll.

They showed 24,686 dead which appeared to be a downward revision from the figure of about 35,000 which had been reported earlier in May, with 7,797 children and 4,959 women confirmed dead, about half the toll cited in previous reports. But the UN said on Monday that estimated overall death toll remained about 35,000.

  • breakfastmtnEnglish
    12·
    8 months ago

    The NYT coverage says:

    The change came because the United Nations switched to citing a more conservative source for its numbers — the Gazan Ministry of Health — rather than using Gaza’s Government Media Office, as it had in recent weeks.

    . . .

    That Gaza media office has consistently provided an overall death toll similar to the one given by the ministry of health, but different and often higher figures for the number of women and children killed.

    Ismail Al Thawabateh, the office’s director general, said in an interview that the health ministry listed and categorized an individual as dead only when all of their details had been documented and verified by a next of kin. He did not explain why his office used a breakdown of women and children based on the overall death toll.

    Most of the coverage, including this Guardian piece, makes it sound like they switched to a different dataset but this sounds like a switch to a different source. The HM numbers have generally been regarded as accurate – historically, at least. I don’t think that the media office has that same reputation. It seems like the previous numbers were calculated from the HM’s total death toll figure, and not from observed data. I’m not really sure what that means for interpreting the numbers.

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