Since Hamas launched a terror attack Oct. 7 on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages, Israel has embarked on an offensive to eliminate Hamas from Gaza.
Earlier this month, Israel’s government offered its first estimate of the operation’s death toll, saying its troops have killed 14,000 terrorists and 16,000 civilians.
In Gaza, the Hamas-run Ministry of Health says 35,000 people have died, and that it has “fully identified” nearly 25,000 of the dead.
The death toll supplied by Hamas does not distinguish between combatants and civilian deaths. Hamas maintains that most of those casualties so far are women and children.
Israel has sharply criticized outside media outlets for uncritically reporting the Hamas tolls and said its own numbers are more reliable.
“Israel has repeatedly stated that the numbers coming out of Gaza, which are being echoed by U.N. agencies, have been manipulated by the Hamas terrorist organization,” Oren Marmorstein, Israel Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said last week.
The numbers “are not accurate, and they do not reflect the reality on the ground,” he added.
When asked about the accuracy of the Palestinian casualty estimates, World Health Organization spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva last week that there is “nothing wrong with the data.”
“The fact we now have 25,000 identified people is a step forward,” he said.
