Total number of victims in Gaza remains constant – UN

The United Nations said on Monday that the number of people who have died in Gaza since the fighting between Israel and Hamas started on October 7th is still more than 35,000, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

The update comes after the UN agency OCHA published a report on May 8 with new information about the number of Palestinians who were hurt or killed in the war. The UN report says fewer women and children were killed in the war than previously thought.

The UN is now counting the number of dead women and children whose names and details are known, instead of just counting all women and children who have died. This is why the number has gone down. The government department says that when people who have died are brought to hospitals, their deaths are included in the total number of deaths.

UN spokesperson Farhan Haq said in a meeting at the UN that the health ministry in Gaza has released two different numbers of people who have died – one for all deaths, and one for just the ones they know who died. The UN report only published the number of people who died and had their names and dates of birth recorded, which made things confusing.

Haq says that the ministry released a list of 24,686 confirmed deaths out of the total 34,622 deaths in Gaza as of April 30th. The number of people who have died is 7,797 children, 4,959 women, 1,924 elderly, and 10,006 men, according to the UN spokesperson who got the information from the Gaza health ministry.

The health authority in Gaza is still working on getting all the information about the people who were hurt.

Two people from the Palestinian Health Ministry told the news that even though they count how many identified and unidentified people have died separately, the total number of deaths is still the same.

The number of people who have died does not include the 10,000 people who are still missing and stuck under the collapsed buildings, officials said.

Israel started attacking Gaza’s military on Oct 7 because the group in charge, Hamas, killed over 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped more than 250 others. Israel has been attacking Gaza for many months, destroying many parts of it and causing a shortage of necessary supplies. This puts over 2. 2 million people at risk of starving.

CNN received a report from the Palestinian health ministry that confirms the number published by OCHA. In the latest report, the Gaza Ministry of Health said that 15,103 children and 9,961 women have been killed in Gaza since Oct 7.

Both the United Nations and United States officials have said they believe the numbers from the Ministry of Health in Gaza are accurate.

CNN cannot check the ministry’s numbers by themselves. The ministry does not see a difference between the number of people hurt or killed in fighting and the number of civilians hurt or killed.