WASHINGTON: The Pentagon on Monday put the number of civilians killed in Gaza in the thousands, but did not provide a specific number.
“As it related to civilian casualties in Gaza ... we know the numbers are in the thousands,” Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said.
The Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said on Monday the death toll from Israeli bombardment of the Palestinian territory had surpassed 10,000, nearly one month after the start of the war.
The toll of 10,022 deaths was announced in a press conference in Gaza by ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidreh.
He said at least 292 Palestinians were killed overnight from Sunday into Monday in intense bombardments by the Israeli army, which he accused of “perpetrating 19 massacres in the last hours.”
According to the ministry, the majority of those killed in Gaza since the start of the war have been civilians, including more than 4,000 children.
The Oct. 7 Hamas attacks triggered the war in Gaza.
The validity of the numbers published by the ministry had been called into question by US President Joe Biden.
To prove the credibility of their figures, on Oct. 26, the Health Ministry published a list of nearly 7,000 names, all people whom it said had been killed in the war up to that point.
The list included the sex, age, and identity number of each person killed.
The ministry said it published the record to “reveal the details and the names to the whole world so that they might know the truth.”
It explained in an accompanying document that in governmental hospitals, which fall under Hamas’s governance, the personal information and ID number of each killed Palestinian is entered into a computerized database after the body arrives or after they succumb to their wounds.
This data is then transmitted daily to the “central register of martyrs” at the Health Ministry.
If the dead are taken to a private hospital, their personal information is recorded on a particular form sent “within 24 hours” to the Health Ministry, which then adds the details to its central database.
The ministry said that a dedicated information center verifies the data provided by both types of hospitals before it is entered into the database to ensure it “does not contain duplicates or errors.”
