The United Nations (U.N.) has significantly reduced the numbers on the amount of Palestinian women and children killed in the war in Gaza. On Wednesday, May 8, the estimated death totals reported for women and children were cut nearly in half.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) published that the number of women killed in the conflict since Oct. 7 was 9,500, while claiming the number of children killed to be 14,500.
Two days later, on May 8, a new report showed 4,959 women and 7,797 children had been killed since the start of the war in Gaza.
OCHA said it does not produce or verify the numbers independently on casualties. Instead, casualty figures are provided by the Ministry of Health or the Government Media Office in Gaza, which is run by Hamas. The agency also receives some numbers from Israeli authorities.
The U.N. maintains the numbers “await further verification” and said other “yet-to-be-reviewed figures are also sourced.”
U.N. Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General Farhan Haq was asked how the numbers could change so drastically.
“The revisions are taken as we, of course, in the fog of war,” Haq said. “It is difficult to come up with numbers. We get numbers from different sources on the ground and then we try to cross check them. As we cross check them, we update the numbers, and we’ll continue to do that as that progresses.”
Haq was pressed on why the change was so “significant.”
“Numbers get adjusted over the course of the conflict, once the conflict is done, we’ll have the most accurate figures, but we’re just going with what we can absolutely confirm, which will always be what the low end of the numbers are,” he said in response.
An unnamed Israeli official who spoke to Fox News had their own explanation for the conflicting numbers.
“Israel has repeatedly said the numbers coming out of Gaza, and which are being echoed by U.N. agencies by Hamas, are not accurate, and do not reflect the reality on the ground,” the official said.
Israel claimed more than a third of Palestinians killed are combatants. However, the numbers from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry have been cited by world leaders and humanitarian organizations.
The U.N.’s explanation did not lay out why the Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers may have changed. However, David Adesnik from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies believes the U.N.’s updated numbers reveal a new methodology that does not rely as heavily on the Gaza Health Ministry. However, how and why the changes were made remain unclear.
“This change may signal that the U.N. has finally recognized the lack of evidence behind Hamas’s original claims,” Adesnik said.
Adesnik called the change a step forward for the U.N., but still questioned whether the numbers can be trusted in the future.
