Israel
Hamas-run Health Ministry inflated Gaza death toll using decade-old fatalities
A number of people included in the latest round of supposedly official data also appeared on a similar list in 2014
April 11, 2025 10:51
A number of people included in the latest round of supposedly official data also appeared on a similar list in 2014
April 11, 2025 10:51Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry used decade-old fatalities to inflate its recent death toll data, it has been discovered.
American author and Honest Reporting board member Salo Aizenberg noticed the reuse of casualty figures this week based on a comparative analysis of lists published by the Palestinian Wafa news agency and the Ministry of Health (MoH) itself.
Aizenberg discovered that a total of five names included in the MoH’s March 2025 data also appeared on the “Martyrs of the War” list issued through Wafa in 2014.
At the time, their deaths were attributed to Operation Protective Edge, seven-weeks of open war between the IDF and Hamas in the wake of the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank.
All five appeared on the 2014 list with identical ID numbers and their dates of death listed between July 24 and July 31 of that year.
Yet they have now cropped up again in the 2025 edition, with the same names, attached to the same ID numbers included, but with only their dates of birth listed.
🧵FIVE Gazans on Hamas’ March 2025 fatality list died 11 YEARS AGO! —per Gaza’s 2014 “Martyrs of the War” list. Two appear now for the first time, after many lists issued already during this war. Same names, same IDs. Yet this is called the most accurate list. IDs & sources: 1/3 pic.twitter.com/7h57PrdzFW
— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) April 9, 2025
Posting his findings to X, Aizenberg wrote: “Five Gazans on Hamas’ March 2025 fatality list died 11 years ago – per Gaza’s 2014 ‘Martyrs of the War’ list.
"Two appear now for the first time, after many lists issued already during this war. Same names, same IDs.
"Yet this is called the most accurate list.
"Not sure how 2 of these previously killed names found their way onto the latest list after 18 months of ‘vetting’.”
The MoH figures are regularly quoted by international media, albeit usually with accreditation to the “Hamas-run health ministry”, and have also been used in UN assessments of the conflict.
Israel has long maintained that the MoH data is unreliable, claiming that it inflates the number of deaths and does not make any distinction between the deaths of civilians and those of terrorists.
It comes after the MoH used the new list to revise previous data, removing nearly 2,000 names from the total, many of whom it admitted had died naturally.
Some who had been reported dead by previous lists were also found to be alive and well, while others had simply been imprisoned.
Zaher Al Wahidi, the ministry’s head of statistics, told Sky News that 97 per cent of those removed had seen their names submitted via an online form that allowed families to report the deaths of relatives when no body could be found.
He said: “We realised that a lot of people [submitted via the form] died a natural death.
"Maybe they were near an explosion and they had a heart attack, or [living in destroyed] houses caused them pneumonia or hypothermia. All these cases we don’t [attribute to] the war.”
He also suggested that some families may have submitted false claims, motivated by the promise of money paid out to relatives of those killed by IDF action.
However, Al Wahidi did not detail whether the MoH took steps to verify the reports, revealing that the error was uncovered only after it received complaints from living Gazans who had been mistakenly listed among the dead.