‘Not Quite the Case. No’: Spokesperson Rebuts Claims UN ‘Halved’ Death Toll of Women and Children In Gaza
Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, was asked on Monday about reports that the United Nations had “revised” down by half the death toll of women and children in Gaza. “It’s not quite the case. No,” Haq replied during a press briefing and launched into a lengthy explanation regarding the change in the numbers.
Haq was asked to react to various headlines circulating in the media like one from the Jerusalem Post that declared, “UN seemingly halves estimate of Gazan women, children killed.” Fox News reported on Monday, “UN revises Gaza death toll, almost 50% less women and children killed than previously reported.”
These reports were based on discrepancies in graphics detailing the death toll in Gaza published on May 6th and May 8th to the UN’s website. “According to an infographic published in OCHA’s daily report on May 6, the number of women killed in the fighting was said to be 9,500, while the organization, which admits to relying on figures from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza, claimed that 14,500 children had been killed since the war began on Oct. 7,” read Fox’s article, adding:
Two days later, in its May 8 report, the U.N. agency appeared to have cut the number nearly in half, showing instead that some 4,959 women and 7,797 children had been killed so far in the war, which began after thousands of Hamas-led terrorists infiltrated southern Israel from Gaza, slaughtering more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking some 240 people hostage.
Haq explained the discrepancy saying, “What’s changed is the Ministry of Health in Gaza has updated the breakdown of fatalities, for whom full details have been documented. So what they recently published was that they gave figures for 24,686 out of 34,622 overall fatalities recorded in Gaza. And those 24,686 people are the ones for whom full details have been documented.”
“In other words, people who have been fully identified, out of those, then out of that smaller number, that subset of identified bodies, you have 7,797 children, 4,959 women, 1,924 elderly, and 10,006 men,” he continued, adding:
And the Ministry of Health says that the documentation process of fully identifying details of the casualties is ongoing. Meanwhile, as you can see, if you do the math that there’s about another 10,000 plus bodies who are 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 reestablished once the full identification process is complete. We, our teams in Gaza, are unable to identify, independently verified these figures, given the situation on the ground and the continuing combat and the sheer number of fatalities. And so we, cite the Ministry of Health as the source for our figures.
Haq also made clear the numbers were likely to change repeatedly throughout the war and that only after the conflict was finished was a more complete picture likely to emerge. Oren Marmorstein, a spokesperson for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, slammed the use of numbers from the Hamas-linked Ministry of Health in Gaza, saying, “They are not accurate and they do not reflect the reality on the ground. The parroting of Hamas’ propaganda messages without the use of any verification process has proven time and again to be methodologically flawed and unprofessional.”
Haq was asked during Monday’s briefing as well about the reliability of the Ministry of Health’s numbers and replied, “Unfortunately, we have the sad experience of coordinating with the Ministry of Health on casualty figures every few years for, large mass casualty incidents in Gaza and in past, past times, their figures have proven to be generally accurate.”
Watch the full clip above.
