Biden Expresses Doubt on Palestinian Death Toll; Palestinian officials respond by publishing 6,747 documented names killed in Gaza

The health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza has published a report listing the names of more than 6,000 “documented deaths” in Gaza since the October 7 terror attacks on Israel, after US President Joe Biden questioned the reliability of Palestinian casualty figures.

The report stated that between October 7 and 26, 7,028 Palestinians were killed, including 2,913 children, and blamed the deaths on Israeli military “aggression.” It said a further 281 bodies had not yet been identified.

The ministry said the actual number of dead is likely to be much higher than stated in the report. The list of 6,747 names gives the sex, age and identity card number of each of the victims – an apparent effort to bolster the credibility of its data in the face of challenges from the US and Israel.

On Wednesday, Biden said he had “no confidence” in the ministry’s casualty figures. On Thursday, White House spokesman John Kirby called the ministry “a front for Hamas,” though when asked he did not dispute that thousands of Palestinians, including many innocent civilians, had been killed.

The dispute highlights the complexities in reporting the number of deaths in Gaza. Numbers of casualties for the besieged enclave are released daily, both by the ministry in Gaza and by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah in the West Bank.

 The ministry made the names public after President Biden on Wednesday cast doubt on Gaza’s official death toll.

President Joe Biden: “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.”

Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch said his organization has always found data from the Gaza Ministry of Health reliable. He said that until quite recently even the U.S. State Department cited the ministry’s data without caveat.

Omar Shakir: “I think it’s worth noting that this creates a fog of war, a fog of misinformation, which can provide political cover for more large-scale atrocities to take place. The conversation should focus on how world leaders can stop further mass atrocities, and not nitpicking whether a number that’s generally proven to be accurate may be a little bit off.”