Hamas has quietly eliminated thousands of deaths from its Gaza war casualty figures, according to new research published Tuesday, The Telegraph reports. This revelation raises further questions about the reliability of casualty statistics that have been widely cited by international media since the conflict began.
Salo Aizenberg from the US-based non-profit organization Honest Reporting discovered that Hamas' March 2025 casualty update had removed thousands of individuals it had previously claimed were killed. "Hamas' new March 2025 fatality list quietly drops 3,400 fully 'identified' deaths listed in its August and October 2024 reports – including 1,080 children. These 'deaths' never happened. The numbers were falsified – again," Aizenberg wrote.
The casualty lists, released as PDFs by the Hamas-run Gaza ministry of health, have been cited by international media as a source for fatality figures since the war began. However, a December report by the Henry Jackson Society had already suggested that civilian casualty numbers were potentially inflated by Hamas to portray Israel as deliberately targeting civilians.
Andrew Fox, who authored the Henry Jackson Society report, said that the recent deletions likely represent an attempt by Hamas to maintain credibility. "We knew there were rafts of errors in their reporting," Fox said. "There's a reasonable explanation in that their computer systems went down in November 2023, so it's been challenging for them to report accurately, but the lists are so unreliable that the world's media shouldn't be quoting them as reliable." Fox added that "the UN also just takes Hamas' figures and publishes them with a note stating the figures are unconfirmed."
The Hamas lists contain information such as names and ID numbers and can be completed by anyone with access to the Google form for the document. Hamas will "have gone through the list, trying to make it as convincing as possible. They've been accepting names onto that list with no evidence whatsoever," Fox explained. "So what I'm guessing they're trying to do is thin out the names they cannot substantiate at all."
Fox, a former British paratrooper who has collaborated with Aizenberg on previous research, said that their teams use publicly available Hamas data and cross-check it name by name. "Salo's research would be looking for names that were on previous lists but have now disappeared," Fox explained. "Hamas releases lists as PDFs, so it's harder to do comparisons but we transfer names to an Excel sheet to do a mass comparison this way."
According to Fox, the data contradicts Hamas' claims about civilian casualties. "The demographics are the most important thing in all this. We've heard the claims that about 70% of the deaths are women and children, and these lists, especially the most recent, show that's complete nonsense," he said.
About 72% of fatalities aged 13-55 are men, which corresponds to the approximate age range of Hamas terrorists, Fox noted. "We know that Hamas uses child soldiers, and these statistics show clearly that Israel is targeting fighting-aged men."
Fox told The Telegraph that in previous conflicts, Hamas figures have often been corroborated by external organizations.
The Henry Jackson Society's December report stated: "The ministry of health, operating under Hamas, has systematically inflated the death toll by failing to distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, over-reporting fatalities among women and children and even including individuals who died before the conflict began."
The report continued: "This has led to a narrative where the Israel Defense Forces are portrayed as disproportionately targeting civilians, while the actual numbers suggest a significant proportion of the dead are combatants." Hamas has claimed more than 50,000 deaths in Gaza since the conflict began. The IDF says it has killed 20,000 Hamas terrorists during the fighting and does everything possible to reduce civilian casualties.
"The IDF makes great efforts to estimate and consider potential civilian collateral damage in its strikes. The IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target children," the IDF said in a statement.
