This revision was almost immediately debunked and retracted which is why the other article was removed and why I’m removing this one as well.
U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq said the ministry’s figures - cited regularly by the U.N. its reporting on the seven-month-long conflict - now reflected a breakdown of the 24,686 deaths of “people who have been fully identified.”
“There’s about another 10,000 plus bodies who still have to be fully identified, and so then the details of those - which of those are children, which of those are women - that will be re-established once the full identification process is complete,” Haq told reporters in New York.
Israel last week questioned why the figures for the deaths of women and children has suddenly halved.
Haq said those figures were for identified bodies - 7,797 children, 4,959 women, 1,924 elderly, and 10,006 men - adding: “The Ministry of Health says that the documentation process of fully identifying details of the casualties is ongoing.”
Same number of dead, the unidentified bodies are just as dead as the identified ones.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Gaza’s Hamas-run ministry of health has revised down figures for the number of women and children confirmed killed in the conflict in the coastal strip.
The revised totals, which first appeared on the website of the UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha), were seized on as proof by pro-Israel media and commentators that the UN had quietly reassessed civilian casualty rates.
The Guardian also understands that the new figures provided by the ministry relate to 24,686 “fully documented cases” out of an estimated 34,622 deaths recorded by 30 April, suggesting an ongoing verification process.
“The United Nations’ teams in Gaza are unable to independently verify those figures given the prevailing situation on the ground and the sheer volume of fatalities.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appeared to respond to the revised figures by suggesting that the vast majority of all remaining male casualties were Hamas combatants.
Research by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem following the 2014 Gaza conflict also found the ministry’s totals were largely consistent with their own survey.
The original article contains 864 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
At the end of the day I don’t think this really changes the conversation substantially (if at all), but it’s always important to ensure the right facts are out there for discussion
Keep in mind, though, it’s an active war zone with almost zero infrastructure. Confirming deaths is almost impossible. Between the sheer number buried under buildings or otherwise unable to get to whatever passes for medical aid, and how frequently what is found is basically unidentifiable…
There’s a lot of dead people being excluded
Important. This is not the number of probable deaths. The number of probable deaths lies as over 45.000 as it includes people under the rubble, very very very likely dead.
The 35.000 includes all bodies found.
The now “revised” number includes all bodies for which the person is identified, so we know it is “Mohamed Abu-Qadr, 6 years old” and not just “unknown child, between 5 and 7 years old”
You got any kind of source on that extra 10k of unidentified bodies? That’s a big number to just throw around.
Removed by mod
This seems to be an indication that Israel has been a lot more precise in targeting fighters than I thought. I don’t see another explanation for the huge disparity between men and women.
I still wouldn’t call it “precise” in the slightest.
Even assuming that this ratio remains constant after the remaining 10,000 unidentified bodies are accounted for, men of fighting age only account for 40% of those being killed and not all of those will be actual Hamas fighters.
The typical combatant to civilian casualty rate in embedded urban warfare is about 1/4. Obviously any civilian death is tragic, but it is a reality of war.
The disparity between men and women in the identifying efforts is quite simple.
When a men is killed, chance is he was out trying to secure food for his family, carrying wounded to hospitals or trying to rescue people from under the rubble. The family then often was in a different place and survived.
When a women and children are killed they were probably at home/in a refugee camp/ on the run and the entire core family is killed and there is no one to refer to for identification anymore.
Did the previous thread get deleted?
Anyhow, this is the most relevant part to me:
Farhan Haq, a UN spokesperson, said the new smaller numbers reflected those bodies which had been fully identified. The bigger figures included corpses for whom identification has so far not been completed.
This is the most cautious body count, which you necessarily know has to be far below the actual number of casualties because neither health workers, nor UN officials, nor Hamas has the means to clear the rubble in destroyed and occupied cities and look for corpses. We won’t know the total extent of deaths in this war until someone has the capacity to conduct a complete census of the remaining Gazans, and that number is compared to the census immediately prior to the conflict. All in all, the headline is really misleading, because “estimated total casualties” and “fully identified casualties” are two different statistics.
The previous thread was deleted because this statement was almost immediately proven false and retracted. I’ll remove this one as well.
To but it more bluntly: If you find 10 little arms in a mass grave you can safely assume that they belong to at least 5 different children.
But if only three of these arms can be identified to a child by a wrist-band or some remaining clothes that is the revised number we are talking about.
Qasim’s take on this:
He’s commenting on bad reporting, and in particular a confusion that no one in this thread here seems to be making.
The Guardian – Bias and Credibility
Bias Rating: Left-Center
Factual Reporting: Mixed
Country: United Kingdom
Press Freedom Rating: Mostly Free
Media Type: Newspaper
Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: Medium Credibility
