Gaza health ministry denies manipulating death toll figures

At al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Alam Hirzallah resigns himself to a grim task: registering the deaths of the wife and two children of his grieving cousin.
His family brought the bodies here on an electric rickshaw or tuk-tuk. They found them in their house in eastern Gaza City after Israeli shelling hit the family home. Asma Hirzallah, Mayar, 5, and Abdullah, 3, were killed.
“The hospital asked for their full names and ID numbers,” explains Alam, referring to the numbers all Palestinians are given in a population registry administered by Israel.
“They gave us a paper to confirm they were martyred and told us to come back for the death certificate. Now we don’t know where to go to bury them as the cemeteries are in areas under Israeli control.”
At least 51,266 people have been killed in the 18 months since the Gaza war began, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, with nearly a third of the dead aged under 18.

Source: BBC | Language: English