London: The Gaza Health Ministry's casualty figures for the first 17 days of Israel's assault on the enclave were accurate, a new study has found.
British group Airwars said the Hamas-run ministry had identified 7,000 people killed in Israeli strikes in the weeks since the conflict.
It added that its own investigation, which assessed 350 incidents, had identified 3,000 casualties during the disputed period, 75 percent of which were also identified by the ministry, which believes the authorities' reporting is likely to be largely accurate.
AirWars, which works to independently verify the effects of conflict on civilians, said it used the same methodology used to assess conflict statistics in Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Libya and elsewhere.
It said there were more than 350 incidents during the disputed period and that it would continue to study the conflict, but it believed the figures in Gaza were less accurate as the war dragged on with widespread destruction in Gaza. The area constrains the ability of local authorities to function.
Emily Tripp, the group's director, said the death toll was clear in the early stages of the conflict.
“We've had, in every event, more people die than we've seen in any other campaign,” she told the New York Times. “The intensity is greater than anything else we've documented.”
Many other international groups and experts have also said the ministry's figures are initially accurate.
Mike Spagat, a professor at Royal Holloway College, University of London, who reviewed AirWars' findings, told the NYT that the group's figures “capture a large part of the underlying reality” reported by Gaza officials in the early days of the war.
A study by researchers at Johns Hopkins in the US also found no evidence that the ministry's figures were significantly wrong as of early November.
Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who analyzed ID numbers from ministry data collected throughout October, found “no clear reason” to ask this.
But in December, Gazan officials, citing the collapse of infrastructure in the enclave, including hospitals and morgues, announced that they would begin relying on “reliable media sources” for casualty figures, as well as what information could be gleaned on the ground.
The ministry's most recent figures say at least 39,000 people have been killed since Israel began its offensive in October.
Israel has repeatedly questioned the ministry's figures based on its closeness to Hamas. Israeli allies in the West have also echoed the doubts, with US President Joe Biden at one stage saying “there is no belief in the numbers (of deaths) that the Palestinians are using.” US officials have since said the data is more accurate than initially believed.
