- UN clarifies breakdown of death toll after Israel says world body relies on ‘fake data’
- Palestinian death toll in the war is at least 35,173, according to Gaza’s health authority
The United Nations on Tuesday was clarifying a fresh breakdown of the death toll in Gaza, after Israel condemned the world body for “parroting … Hamas’s propaganda messages”.
“Anyone who relies on fake data from a terrorist organisation in order to promote blood libels against Israel is antisemitic and supports terrorism,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on X, formerly Twitter, late Monday.
Due to a lack of access, UN agencies have since the beginning of the Gaza war on October 7 relied on death tolls provided by the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
This has drawn criticism from Israel, but the United Nations says the ministry’s tolls before the war were deemed reliable, and that it will strive to verify the figures “when conditions permit”.
The ministry said Tuesday that at least 35,173 people have been killed in the territory due to Israeli military operations since the war erupted. . .
- Of those fully identified, it said 40 per cent were men, 20 per cent women and 32 per cent children, while another eight per cent were elderly – a category not broken down by gender.
WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier on Tuesday said the new breakdown as “the most comprehensive” provided to date.
- He told reporters in Geneva that by applying the same ratio to the unidentified and assuming women represent half of the elderly, it could be expected that at least “56 per cent women and children” were among the more than 35,000 dead.
- So from a “minimum statistical calculation”, he said, “you come to 60 per cent women and children”.
Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, said the new breakdown did not contradict previous estimates that women and children made up more than two thirds of those killed.
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