WASHINGTON – The United Nations has cut its estimate of the number of women and children killed during Israel’s war on Gaza by nearly half, calling for greater scrutiny of the numbers coming from the armed Hamas movement.
Of the 34,735 people who have died in Gaza since the war began, According to data published on May 6 According to the United Nations, there were more than 9,500 women and more than 14,500 children.
But in updated data Posted two days later On May 8, the United Nations significantly reduced the numbers to 4,959 women and 7,797 children out of a reported 34,844 people killed in Gaza.
The United Nations cites data from the Ministry of Health in Gaza, controlled by Hamas, to obtain casualty figures. The UN reports come with a disclaimer that says: “The United Nations has not yet been able to produce independent, comprehensive and verifiable casualty figures.”
In a statement to USA TODAY, UN spokeswoman Eri Kaneko referred to the update issued by the Gaza Ministry of Health on April 30 regarding the breakdown of the 24,686 deaths, for which the ministry had full details.
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“According to the ministry, the deaths whose full details have been documented include 7,797 children, 4,959 women, 1,924 elderly people, and 10,006 men,” Kaneko said. “The Ministry of Health notes that the process of documenting the full details of those infected is continuing.”
Hamas said it had no details about the deaths of more than 11,000 people.
Last month, the Ministry of Health in Gaza She said on her Telegram channel It had incomplete data on the 11,371 deaths it claimed to have documented. The Ministry indicated in the report that the record is considered incomplete if the ID number, full name, date of birth, or date of death is missing.
Kaneko said that UN teams in Gaza were unable to independently verify these numbers due to “the prevailing situation on the ground and the huge number of deaths.”
She added: “For this reason, all figures used by the United Nations clearly point to the Ministry of Health in Gaza as the source.” He added, “The United Nations will verify these numbers to the greatest extent possible when circumstances permit.”
The revised estimates were first reported by Jerusalem Post.
After the initial expression Doubt Last year, and about the accuracy of the numbers provided by Hamas, President Joe Biden in recent months began citing death numbers from the Gaza Ministry of Health, including during his State of the Union address to Congress in March.
Israeli officials have long questioned the death tolls announced by Hamas, including the percentage of women and children killed during the war.
“Hamas wants the world to believe that the main victims and dead were women and children, an argument that was almost universally accepted until very recently,” said Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. he wrote in a blog post.
“Now even the United Nations, or part of it, silently admits that it blindly accepted Hamas’ numbers that are intended to mislead,” said Abrams, a former deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush.
According to the latest UN figures, 40% of the victims in Gaza are men, 32% are children, 20% are women, and 8% are the elderly.
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