‘Patently Falsified’: Hamas Deletes Thousands From Gaza Death List, Including Over 1,000 Children

Hamas has quietly removed thousands of names from its official casualty reports in Gaza, prompting fresh scrutiny of the accuracy of the death toll figures that have been widely cited by media and international organizations since the start of the Palestinian terrorist group’s war with Israel.

An analysis, conducted by Salo Aizenberg of the US-based nonprofit Honest Reporting and first reported on by the Telegraph, revealed that 3,400 individuals listed as killed in earlier updates released by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health in August and October 2024 no longer appear in the March 2025 report. Among those missing from the latest list are 1,080 children.

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Aizenberg said the systematic inflation of civilian death tolls by Hamas is not a new phenomenon. “They have done this in every round of conflict. For example, in 2009’s Cast Lead, Hamas initially claimed that 1,300 Palestinians died and only about 50 were combatants. Months later Hamas admitted that in fact 600-700 were their fighters,” he said.

The casualty lists compiled by the Gaza Ministry of Health are distributed as downloadable PDFs and include personal details such as names, identification numbers, and dates of death. These lists have been widely cited by international media and relied upon by humanitarian groups and United Nations agencies monitoring the toll of the war. The health ministry is under the control of Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip.

The discrepancy in figures has raised questions about the continued reliance on these data sets, especially given mounting evidence of inconsistencies.

“The evidence is now all out there in the public domain,” Andrew Fox, a former British paratrooper who has worked with Aizenberg on data-verification projects in the past, told The Algemeiner. “These Hamas numbers are error-strewn and clearly manipulated.”

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According to a December report authored by Fox and published by the Henry Jackson Society, nearly half of those killed in Gaza are combatants, directly contradicting claims that the vast majority of casualties are civilians. The report also pointed to demographic inconsistencies, including the repeated listing of women and children to support allegations of indiscriminate attacks, and the lowering of adult men’s ages to inflate the number of minors reported killed.

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Despite these issues, some international entities, including the United Nations, and news outlets have continued to cite the figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health, occasionally with the disclaimer that the numbers could not be independently confirmed.

Fox said such caveats are insufficient and that the deletions from Hamas’s own published records have, in his view, stripped away any plausible justification for continuing to rely on the ministry’s figures. “It is malpractice and deeply irresponsible on the part of any media organization still using them. There is simply no excuse for repeating them as credible,” he said.

‘Patently Falsified’: Hamas Deletes Thousands From Gaza Death List, Including Over 1,000 Children
 
Hamas has quietly removed thousands of names from its official casualty reports in Gaza, prompting fresh scrutiny of the accuracy of the death toll figures that have been widely cited by media and international organizations since the start of the Palestinian terrorist group’s war with Israel.
 
An analysis, conducted by Salo Aizenberg of the US-based nonprofit Honest Reporting and first reported on by the Telegraph, revealed that 3,400 individuals listed as killed in earlier updates released by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health in August and October 2024 no longer appear in the March 2025 report. Among those missing from the latest list are 1,080 children.
 
(...)
 
Aizenberg said the systematic inflation of civilian death tolls by Hamas is not a new phenomenon. “They have done this in every round of conflict. For example, in 2009’s Cast Lead, Hamas initially claimed that 1,300 Palestinians died and only about 50 were combatants. Months later Hamas admitted that in fact 600-700 were their fighters,” he said.
 
The casualty lists compiled by the Gaza Ministry of Health are distributed as downloadable PDFs and include personal details such as names, identification numbers, and dates of death. These lists have been widely cited by international media and relied upon by humanitarian groups and United Nations agencies monitoring the toll of the war. The health ministry is under the control of Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip.
 
The discrepancy in figures has raised questions about the continued reliance on these data sets, especially given mounting evidence of inconsistencies.  
 
“The evidence is now all out there in the public domain,” Andrew Fox, a former British paratrooper who has worked with Aizenberg on data-verification projects in the past, told The Algemeiner. “These Hamas numbers are error-strewn and clearly manipulated.”
 
(...)
 
According to a December report authored by Fox and published by the Henry Jackson Society, nearly half of those killed in Gaza are combatants, directly contradicting claims that the vast majority of casualties are civilians. The report also pointed to demographic inconsistencies, including the repeated listing of women and children to support allegations of indiscriminate attacks, and the lowering of adult men’s ages to inflate the number of minors reported killed.
 
(...)
 
Despite these issues, some international entities, including the United Nations, and news outlets have continued to cite the figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health, occasionally with the disclaimer that the numbers could not be independently confirmed.

Fox said such caveats are insufficient and that the deletions from Hamas’s own published records have, in his view, stripped away any plausible justification for continuing to rely on the ministry’s figures. “It is malpractice and deeply irresponsible on the part of any media organization still using them. There is simply no excuse for repeating them as credible,” he said.