Reports on Gaza death toll growing more inaccurate, analysis finds

• Published date: 29 March 2024
• Author: JERUSALEM POST STAFF
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Since early November, the Hamas-controlled Gazan Health Ministry has been relying on media reports to supplement its own data collection systems

The use of media reports for Gazan fatality data now sits at nearly two-thirds of deaths; this has been on the rise steadily since November and has made up the majority of data since at least late December.

The author of the analysis, Gabriel Epstein, explains that the media reports are difficult to trust as they are "more difficult to verify, regularly lack the details necessary to determine the identities or disposition of those killed, and may double-count or miss many fatalities."

Epstein highlights the discrepancies between the media reports and the central collection system (CCS) used by the Gazan Health Ministry. He shows that media reports disproportionately feature women and children, with 91.6% of the recorded deaths being women and children, whereas the CCS had that figure at 48.3% of deaths being women and children.

Epstein says some of the discrepancies can be explained by media reports being unlikely to record combatant deaths for a variety of reasons but that the recorded discrepancy is too large to be explained by this factor alone.

He also gives some leeway in the divergence from Israel's figure of 13,000 combatants killed due to many of the combatant deaths being unrecordable by non-IDF sources, for example, those killed in the tunnels.

A sharp decrease

The CCS shows a sharp decrease in fatalities since November, with only 286 recorded from March 1 to 18, compared to 5,192 from November 3 to December 11. There was also a prominent increase in the proportion of men recorded dead by the CCS, rising from 33.2% of deaths in October to 70.3% in March.

Epstein attributes this proportional increase to several factors, such...