Gaza
\nThe Palestinian death toll from the war in Gaza could be substantially higher than official figures reported by the Hamas-run health ministry, research published in The Lancet medical journal suggests.
\nThe UK-led study covered the first nine months of the war, which began when Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October 2023.
\nIt used data from the ministry, an online survey of relatives reporting fatalities, and obituaries. It estimated that up until 30 June 2024, 64,260 Palestinians died from traumatic injury, meaning an under-reporting of deaths by 41%.
\nThe Israeli embassy in the UK said \u201cany information that derives from Gaza cannot be trusted\u201d and served Hamas.
\nThe UN treats the health ministry\u2019s figures as reliable.
\nThe ministry\u2019s figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but a recent report by the UN said the majority of verified victims over a six month period were women and children.
\nIsrael says Hamas\u2019s figures cannot be trusted. In August, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had \u201celiminated over 17,000 terrorists\u201d, though it is unclear how it arrived at this figure.
\nThe IDF insists it only targets combatants and tries to avoid or minimise civilian casualties.
\nIsrael is not allowing international journalists from media organisations, including the BBC, independent access to Gaza, making it difficult to verify the facts on the ground.
\nThe team behind the latest study used a statistical method called \u201ccapture-recapture\u201d, a technique which has been used to evaluate deaths in other conflicts.
\nResearchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine looked at how many people turned up repeatedly in different attempts to count deaths. The level of overlap between those lists suggested that the number of deaths directly caused by traumatic injury in the conflict could be significantly higher than hospital figures published by the Ministry of Health.
\nGaza\u2019s health ministry issues updated death tolls from the war daily. It compiles the figures from deaths recorded in hospitals, deaths reported by family members, and deaths from \u201creliable media reports\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gaza The Palestinian death toll from the war in Gaza could be substantially higher than official figures reported by the Hamas-run health ministry, research published in The Lancet medical journal suggests. The UK-led study covered the first nine months of the war, which began when Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October 2023. It used […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454891,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-454862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n