The Gaza Health Ministry — which is controlled by Hamas — has long been the primary source of casualty figures from the ongoing war. But its recent claims that 70% of those killed are women and children are now facing serious scrutiny, with mounting evidence that the figures are misleading, inflated, and politically motivated.

Since the war broke out in October 2023, Hamas’s Gaza Health Ministry has reported that over 50,000 people have been killed, insisting that the overwhelming majority are civilians. However, analysts and researchers are increasingly exposing major discrepancies in the death toll data, suggesting that Hamas is manipulating the numbers to sway international opinion and vilify Israel.

A detailed analysis by the Henry Jackson Society revealed that many of those listed as “women and children” were, in fact, adult males — the prime fighting age for Hamas combatants. The report also noted that deaths from natural causes and accidents were falsely categorized as war casualties. Their findings suggest that nearly 72% of the dead were men between the ages of 13 and 55 — a group far more likely to be militants than innocent civilians.

Independent verification efforts have similarly cast doubt on Hamas’s narrative. The Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) group reviewed Gaza’s published casualty lists and concluded that around 74% of those recorded were civilians, although they warned that Hamas’s data itself is deeply unreliable and often unverifiable.

Even U.S. intelligence agencies and Israeli sources have challenged the credibility of the Gaza Health Ministry’s reports, pointing out that Hamas has a clear incentive to exaggerate civilian deaths while downplaying the number of its own fighters killed.

The fact remains: the so-called Gaza Health Ministry is not an independent, neutral authority. It operates under Hamas’s totalitarian grip, and its figures serve the terror group’s propaganda machine — not the pursuit of truth.

As the war rages on, discerning accurate information has become increasingly difficult. But one thing is clear: trusting Hamas to honestly report on civilian casualties is like trusting an arsonist to accurately count the fires.