UN cuts estimate of women and children killed in Gaza by 50%

The United Nations has significantly lowered certain casualty figures in the Israel-Hamas war.

Their latest report reduces the number of women and children killed in Gaza by half.

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated on May 6 that over 9,500 women and 14,500 children had been killed in Gaza.

Two days later, OCHA officially listed under 5,000 women and 8,000 children as casualties.

The Hamas-run Government Media Office has previously served as the source for the UN’s casualty figures, according to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

On May 8, they stopped citing the GMO as a source for reported fatalities on their website.

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“This change may signal that the UN has finally recognized the lack of evidence behind Hamas’s original claims that more than 14,000 children and 9,000 women have been killed in Gaza. If so, the UN should state clearly that it has lost confidence in sources whose credibility it has affirmed for months. While this change may only reflect the conclusion of one UN office out of the many operating in Gaza, it is a clear step forward,” said David Adesnik, Senior Fellow and Director of Research for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, was asked at a press conference on Friday why the casualty numbers changed.

“The revisions are taken … you know, of course, in the fog of war, it’s difficult to come up with numbers,” Haq told a reporter. “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.”

According to Haq, the overall death toll in Gaza remains unchanged.

He claims 24,686 casualties out of the 34,622 recorded in Gaza have been fully identified.