News - Middle East: A new report based on open-source evidence supports the figures released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health regarding the number of Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, despite claims by the United States and Israel that the numbers cannot be trusted, the British Middle East Eye website reported.

According to an Airwars investigation that independently identified nearly 3,000 full names of civilian victims killed in the first 17 days of the war, the ministry's figures are "broadly reliable" in spite of the difficulties involved in assessing the casualties.

Since October, the health ministry has regularly released updates of the number of Palestinians killed by Israel's assault.

On Wednesday, it said that so far, 39,145 Palestinians have been killed and 90,257 wounded in Gaza.

The figures have been disputed by Israel and its allies, with US President Joe Biden saying last year that he had "no confidence" in them.

The report - which Airwars described as the "largest and most in-depth public analysis of the [Ministry of Health] data yet" produced - said the investigation found a high correlation between the ministry figures and what Palestinian civilians reported online, with 75 percent of publicly reported names also appearing on the MoH list.

Airwars is a London-based non-profit affiliated with the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, that investigates civilian deaths in conflicts.

“This painstaking research provides strong validation for both the first Ministry of Health list of the dead and the reliability of social media posts from Palestinians collected by Airwars covering the same period,” said Professor Mike Spagat, chair of monitoring group Every Casualty Counts.

“Neither list is complete but the 75 percent matching rate demonstrates convincingly that both capture a large fraction of the underlying reality.”

Thousands of Palestinians remain missing and are presumed to have died under the rubble following the Israeli attacks.

A recent study in the British medical journal The Lancet recalculated the mortality rate in Gaza, based on indirect deaths ranging from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. The study estimated that the number of victims of the Israeli war on Gaza is 186,000 from direct and indirect deaths.

The study was based on the fact that in recent conflicts and wars, the number of indirect deaths has ranged from about 3 to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Using the estimated population of the Gaza Strip in 2022 of 2,375,259, this means that the number of victims from direct and indirect deaths will be 7.9 percent of the total population in the Strip.