The Associated Press did a deep dive into the death toll numbers from the Hamas health ministry in Gaza and found large discrepancies.
In the article they point out that there are two types of reporting on the death toll numbers, the daily reports and the periodic reports:
The Health Ministry announces a new death toll for the war nearly every day. It also has periodically released the underlying data behind this figure, including detailed lists of the dead.
This is the basis for their comparisons and here’s what they found:
The AP’s analysis looked at these lists, which were shared on social media in late October, early January, late March, and the end of April. Each list includes the names of people whose deaths were attributable to the war, along with other identifying details.
The daily death tolls, however, are provided without supporting data. In February, ministry officials said 75% of the dead were women and children – a level that was never confirmed in the detailed reports. And as recently as March, the ministry’s daily reports claimed that 72% of the dead were women and children, even as underlying data clearly showed the percentage was well below that.
AP’s examination of the reports found flaws in the Palestinian record keeping. As Gaza’s hospital system collapsed in December and January, the ministry began relying on hard-to-verify “media reports” to register new deaths. Its March report included 531 individuals who were counted twice, and many deaths were self-reported by families, instead of health officials.
Epstein, the Washington Institute researcher, said using different data-collection methodologies and then combining all the numbers gives an inaccurate picture.
“That’s probably the biggest problem,” he said, adding that he was surprised there hadn’t been more scrutiny.
Their analysis has also found that the number of women and children killed in Gaza has decreased tremendously since the beginning of the war, and this conflicts with what the Hamas health ministry has claimed:
The proportion of Palestinian women and children being killed in the Israel-Hamas war appears to have declined sharply, an Associated Press analysis of Gaza Health Ministry data has found, a trend that both coincides with Israel’s changing battlefield tactics and contradicts the ministry’s own public statements.
The trend is significant because the death rate for women and children is the best available proxy for civilian casualties in one of the 21st century’s most destructive conflicts. In October, when the war began, it was above 60%. For the month of April, it was below 40%. Yet the shift went unnoticed for months by the U.N. and much of the media, and the Hamas-linked Health Ministry has made no effort to set the record straight.
The AP analysis highlights facts that have been overlooked and could help inform the public debate, said Gabriel Epstein, a research assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East policy who has also studied the Health Ministry data.
The declining impact on women and children — as well as a drop in the overall death rate — are “definitely due to a change in the way the IDF is acting right now,” Epstein said, using an acronym for the Israeli army. “That’s an easy conclusion, but I don’t think it’s been made enough.”
After marching across most of Gaza and saying it had achieved many key objectives, Israel then began withdrawing most of its ground forces. It reduced the frequency of aerial bombings and has focused in recent months on smaller drone strikes and limited ground operations.
As the intensity of fighting has scaled back, the death toll has continued to rise, but at a slower rate – and with seemingly fewer civilians caught in the crossfire. In April, women and children made up 38% of the newly and fully identified deaths, the Health Ministry’s most recent data shows.
The article is much longer and you can read it here…