From early May 2024, the ministry updated its breakdown of fatalities to include unidentified bodies, which accounted for nearly a third of the overall toll. Since then, health authorities have been working to identify them and none are now listed in the death toll.
Zaher Al-Waheidi, director of the Information Unit at the Gaza health ministry, attributed progress in identifying bodies to the restoration of a central database from Shifa Hospital and a system allowing families to provide input on victims, which is then verified by medics and police.
In the two months of relative calm during the ceasefire that began in January, work accelerated, he said.
A Reuters examination of an earlier Gaza health ministry list of those killed showed that more than 1,200 families have been completely wiped out, including one entire family of 14 people.
**Is the Gaza death toll comprehensive?**
The numbers do not necessarily reflect all victims, as many are still under rubble, the ministry says. It estimates some 10,000 bodies were uncounted in this way, with only a few dozen of them recovered since the ceasefire.
Official Palestinian tallies of direct deaths in the Gaza war likely undercounted the number of casualties by about 40% in the first nine months of the war as Gaza's healthcare infrastructure unravelled, according to a peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet journal in January.
The UN human rights office also says the Palestinian authorities' figure is probably an undercount. In past Gaza wars, the UN tally sometimes exceeded the Palestinian count.
The deaths it has verified so far show that nearly 70% were women and children.
**How credible is the Gaza death toll?**
Pre-war Gaza had robust population statistics and better health information systems than in most Middle East countries, public health experts told Reuters.
A study of open sources by the UK-based Airwars nonprofit found a correlation of at least 75% between its lists and those of Gazan authorities for thousands killed early in the war.
The UN often cites the ministry's death figures and the World Health Organization has voiced full confidence in them.
**Does Hamas control the figures?**
While Hamas has run Gaza since 2007, the enclave's health ministry also answers to the overall Palestinian Authority ministry in Ramallah in the West Bank.
Gaza's Hamas-run government has paid the salaries of all those hired in public departments since 2007, including in the health ministry. The Palestinian Authority still pays the salaries of those hired before then.
**What does Israel say?**
Israeli officials have said the figures are suspect because of Hamas's control over the government in Gaza. Foreign ministry spokesperson Oren Mamorstein said the numbers were manipulated and “do not reflect the reality on the ground”.
However, Israel's military has also accepted in briefings that the overall Gaza casualty numbers are broadly reliable.
The Israeli military says 407 of its soldiers were killed in combat since its Gaza ground operation began on October 27 2023.
The Israeli military says it goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. It says Hamas uses Gaza's civilians as human shields by operating within densely populated areas, humanitarian zones, schools and hospitals, which Hamas denies.
**How many of the dead are fighters?**
The Palestinian health ministry figures do not differentiate between civilians and Hamas combatants, who do not wear formal uniform or carry separate identification.
Israel periodically estimates the number of Hamas fighters killed. Recent assessments put the number of Palestinian militant dead at 20,000. It says about one civilian was killed for every fighter, a ratio it blames on Hamas for using civilian facilities.
Israeli officials say such estimates are reached through a combination of counting bodies on the battlefield, intercepts of Hamas communications and intelligence assessments of personnel in targets that were destroyed.
Hamas has said Israeli estimates of its losses are exaggerated, without saying how many of its fighters have been killed.
**Reuters**