Number’s up Stats watchdog to examine Gaza death toll figures

THE British statistics watchdog is examining fresh claims that death toll figures from Hamas cannot be trusted.

The UK Statistics Authority is assessing whether casualty data provided by the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza should be relied on.

Now Sir Michael Ellis KC, the former Attorney General, has written to the UK Statistics Authority to alert them to an admission by Hamas that they have “incomplete data” on a third of Gazan deaths.

He cautioned that these figures cannot be trusted – particularly given the recent acknowledgement by Hamas that 11,371 of the fatalities it has claimed to date have partial records.

This makes up roughly a third of the deaths overall it has recorded since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

In a statistical report published on April 6, the Hamas-run health ministry said it considers an individual record to be incomplete if it is missing any one of these key data points: identity number, full name, date of birth or date of death.

Sir Michael told The Telegraph: “Any casualty of war is a tragedy. But it is important to recognise that Hamas is a vicious terrorist organisation and their reports should not be automatically accepted and repeated as the unquestioned truth.

“Several academics have already pointed out that the statistics are unreliable. Now Hamas itself has questioned the accuracy of their own casualty figures meaning they may have been overestimated by more than a third. I look forward to hearing from the UK stats authority with its professional assessment of this matter.”

The health ministry says more than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 76,000 have been wounded.