The United Nations is reporting lower revised figures on the confirmed number of Palestinian Arab deaths in the Israel-Hamas war, calling into question the death toll that has been provided by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry.

In March, the director of the United Nations Children’s Fund, Catherine Russell, cited data from the Hamas-run health ministry when she said that more than 13,000 children have died since October 7, “an astronomically horrifying number.”

On Thursday, though, the UN released new figures, noting a difference between the total deaths “reported” by the health ministry in Gaza and a lower number of fatalities that had been “identified.” 

The difference between the numbers is attributed in the report to the fact that some Gazans have been reported missing or are buried under debris of buildings damaged during the war and unable to be accounted for.

The new data show that 7,797 children have been “identified” as having died in Gaza since the war began, substantially lower than the “reported” number of deaths. Neither the UN report, though, nor the Gaza Health Ministry specifies what age is considered the cutoff between children and adults in their death counts.

Out of the more than 34,000 “reported fatalities” — a figure that has been repeated across numerous press outlets, including in the New York Times on Friday — the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs asserts as of May 8 that 24,686 are “identified.” 

Of those 24,686 identified as having died, the UN reports, 10,006 were men, 4,959 were women, 1,924 were elderly, and the remainder were children. The report notes that the tally does not include “more than 10,000 reported missing or under the rubble.” 

Asked by a reporter on Friday how the death numbers were revised, the deputy spokesman for the UN secretary-general, Farhan Haq, said, “In the fog of war, it’s difficult to come up with numbers. We get numbers from different sources on the ground, and then we try to crosscheck them. As we crosscheck them, we update the numbers, and we’ll continue to do that as that progresses.” 

The UN report includes a disclaimer that the agency “has so far not been able to produce independent, comprehensive, and verified casualty figures.”

The global body added that “the current numbers have been provided by the Ministry of Health or the Government Media Office in Gaza and the Israeli authorities and await further verification.”

Gaza’s health ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. It has repeated that women and children have made up about two-thirds of those killed. The Israeli military said in February it has killed more than 10,000 Hamas terrorists through air strikes and ground operations launched in response to October 7. 

The new fatality figures are about one-third lower than what was initially reported by the UN, yet Mr. Haq said that people “can consider them reliable from the fact that we’re continually checking them.” 

Mr. Haq added that “numbers get adjusted many times over the course of a conflict. Once a conflict is done, we’ll have the most accurate figures. But we’re just going with what we can absolutely confirm, which will always be the low end of what the numbers are.”

Critics of the death statistics put forward by the UN and Gaza Health ministry, noting the lack of specifics on the age cutoff between child and adult fatalities, suspect that some young men in their late teens, many of whom are active Hamas combatants, could be among those counted as child deaths in reports.

The UN’s press office did not immediately respond to the Sun’s request for comment on the matter.