Gaza Strip: Government asks for international support to count victims

The Gaza government, led by Hamas, requested international help last Friday, January 10, to identify and recover the thousands of bodies that remain trapped under the rubble in the Gaza Strip, as a result of more than fifteen months of war and constant Israeli attacks.

This request arises after the publication of a study in the scientific journal The Lancet, which suggests that Violent deaths in Gaza during the first eight months of the conflict could be 41% higher than figures reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The research, carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, It is estimated that between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024, 64,260 Gazans died violently. A figure that exceeds by 26,383 the 37,877 deaths officially registered by the Palestinian authorities in that same period.

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The data published in The Lancet indicate that approximately 3% of the Gazan population would have died from the war in those eight months, and 59% of those who died were women, children or the elderly.

“This figure significantly exceeds that reported by our Ministry of Health, which only counts martyrs who arrive at hospitals. This discrepancy highlights the magnitude of the catastrophe inflicted by the occupation forces on civilians in the Gaza Strip”indicated the Hamas Government.

This gap is due to the “inability” to register all the victims and the lack of communication with some governorates, especially those in the north, where the consequences of the catastrophe are still difficult to quantify due to the lack of access.

“Continued killings, siege, attacks on medical equipment, destruction of hospitals and prohibition of civil defense teams from operating hamper efforts to recover and bury thousands of bodies. Consequently, the published statistics reflect only a limited part of the harsh reality that our honorable Palestinian people live” he added.

For this reason, the Executive called on the international community, the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies to help document the “true number of victims, which far exceeds those officially reported”; and to facilitate access for rescue teams to devastated areas to “recover bodies and ensure their dignified burial, in accordance with their religion and international humanitarian standards.”

The Gazan government, which referred to the war in Gaza as “the biggest humanitarian disaster in decades,” Yesterday, the official number of deaths registered in hospitals increased by 46 thousand in more than fifteen months of war, although the data in the north, which has suffered since last October the worst Israeli offensive since the war began, is unreliable due to the lack of access by rescue teams and humanitarian agencies.

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