Hundreds of names removed from official Gaza war death list

Published

7 months ago

April 5, 2025

admin

Gaza’s health ministry has removed 1,852 people from its official list of war fatalities since October, after finding that some had died of natural causes or were alive but had been imprisoned.

The list of deaths currently stands at 50,609 following the removals. Gaza’s health ministry records do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Almost all of the names removed (97%) had initially been submitted through an online form which allows families to record the deaths of loved ones where the body is missing.

The head of the statistics team at Gaza’s health ministry, Zaher Al Wahidi, told Sky News that names submitted via the form had been removed as a precautionary measure pending a judicial investigation into each one.

“We realised that a lot of people [submitted via the form] died a natural death,” Mr Wahidi said. “Maybe they were near an explosion and they had a heart attack, or [living in destroyed] houses caused them pneumonia or hypothermia. All these cases we don’t [attribute to] the war.”

Others submitted via the form were found to be imprisoned or to be missing with insufficient evidence that they had died.

Some families submitting false claims, Mr Wahidi said, may have been motivated by the promise of government financial assistance.

It is the largest removal of names from the list since the war began, and comes after 1,441 names were removed between August and October – 54% of them originating in hospital morgue records rather than the online form.

Mr Wahidi says his team audited the hospital data after receiving complaints from people who had ended up on the list despite being alive.

They found that hospital clerks, when operating without access to the central population registry and lacking full names or dates of birth for the dead, had marked the wrong people as dead in their records.

In total, 8% of people who were listed as dead in August have since been removed from the official death toll. Many of those may later be added back in, as the judicial investigations proceed.

‘It doesn’t look like manipulation’

Gabriel Epstein, a research assistant at US thinktank The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said there’s no reason to think the errors are the result of deliberate manipulation intended to inflate the share of women and children among the dead.

“If 90% of the removed entries were men aged 18-40, that would look like manipulation,” he said. “But it doesn’t look like that.”

Of those entries removed since the start of the war and whose demographic information was recorded, 41% are men aged 18 to 60, while 59% are women, children and elderly people.

By comparison, 44% of remaining deaths are working-age men. This means that the removals have had the effect of slightly reducing the share of women and children in the official list.

Names were previously added to the list without verification

Until October, Mr Wahidi said, names submitted via the online form had been added to the official list of registered deaths before undergoing a judicial confirmation process.

The publication of unverified deaths submitted via the form had previously led to issues with the data, with 1,295 deaths submitted via the form being removed from the list prior to October. This included 474 people who were later added back again.

Sky News previously understood that names from the form were only published after undergoing judicial confirmation. However, Mr Wahidi says this practice only began in October.

“This does cause me to downgrade the quality of the earlier lists, definitely below where I thought they were,” said Professor Michael Spagat, chair of Every Casualty Counts, an independent civilian casualty monitoring organisation.

A Ministry of Health document from July 2024 confirms that names submitted through the online form were, at the time, included in the official fatality list before being verified.

These names “are initially included in the final count of martyrs, but verification procedures are undertaken afterward”, the document says.

“They basically said that they were posting these things provisionally pending investigation,” said Prof Spagat.

“There may have been literally zero people, including us, who actually absorbed this message, but they weren’t hiding it either.”

More than 1,200 Israelis have been killed in the 7 October attack and ensuing war.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

World

At least 20 dead and 150 injured after magnitude 6.3 earthquake in north Afghanistan

Published

2 hours ago

November 3, 2025

admin

At least 20 dead and 150 injured after magnitude 6.3 earthquake in north Afghanistan

At least 20 people have died after a magnitude 6.3 earthquake in Afghanistan, the Taliban has said.

The tremor was recorded near the city of Mazar-e Sharif, in the northern Balkh province, at around 12.59am on Monday (8.29pm in the UK).

The Taliban Health Ministry added that 320 were injured, while ministry spokesperson Sharfat Zaman said that the numbers of dead and injured might rise.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) has issued an orange alert on its system of quake impacts, and suggested that “significant casualties are likely and the disaster is potentially widespread”.

Previous events at that alert level have required a regional or national level response, according to the USGS’s alert system.

Balkh province spokesperson Haji Zaid added that the earthquake destroyed part of the city’s holy shrine, known as the Blue Mosque.

The United Nations in Afghanistan said on X that it is on the ground assessing needs and delivering aid, and that: “We stand with the affected communities and will provide the necessary support.”

Mazar-e Sharif is the fifth-largest city in Afghanistan, with a population of around 523,000.

Located on two major active fault lines, Afghanistan is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes: More than 1,400 people were killed and at least 3,250 others injured after a magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit the country’s eastern regions in September.

That tremor wiped out villages in the Mazar Dara valley, which Sky’s Asia correspondent Cordelia Lynch visited in October.

In 2015, an earthquake struck northeastern Afghanistan, killing several hundred people in Afghanistan and nearby northern Pakistan.

Four large earthquakes also struck in the Herat province in 2023, each magnitude 6.3. The Taliban said at the time that at least 2,445 people had died.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.

Please refresh the page for the latest version.

You can receive breaking news alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News app. You can also follow us on WhatsApp and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.

World

Hurricane Melissa leaves 28 dead after tearing through Jamaica

Published

1 day ago

November 2, 2025

admin

Hurricane Melissa leaves 28 dead after tearing through Jamaica

A total of 28 people have died following Hurricane Melissa’s rampage across Jamaica, the government has confirmed.

Melissa, one of the strongest storms on record to make landfall in the Caribbean, brought with it winds of up to 185mph when it hit the island earlier this week.

The Red Cross described it as a “disaster of unprecedented catastrophe”.

Melissa ravaged through Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba.

It weakened by the time it reached Cuba on Wednesday morning but still brought devastation – with houses collapsed and roads blocked.

A statement from the government of Jamaica said it was “deeply saddened to confirm 28 fatalities associated with the passage of Hurricane Melissa”.

It went on: “We extend heartfelt condolences to the families, friends, and communities mourning their loved ones.”

Eyewitness: ‘Send help’ – the desperate pleas from Hurricane Melissa survivors

The confirmation came as the first British repatriation flight was setting off from the island on Saturday evening local time.

The flight, chartered by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, was for those “unable to leave Jamaica on commercial routes”.

Essential relief supplies are now rolling into some of the hardest hit areas.

The UK government is mobilising an additional £5m in emergency humanitarian funding – on top of £2.5m announced earlier this week – to support the region’s recovery.

This new funding will enable the UK to send humanitarian supplies – including more than 3,000 shelter kits and over 1,500 solar-powered lanterns to help those whose homes have been damaged and those without power.

The UK is working with the World Food Programme and Red Cross, to ensure emergency relief reaches those who need it most.

At least 25 people died in the southern Haitian coastal town of Petit-Goave after the La Digue river burst its banks as a result of the hurricane, according to the town’s mayor Jean Bertrand Subreme.

World

Ukrainian troops ‘start surrendering’ in key city but Kyiv says situation ‘dynamic’

Published

2 days ago

November 1, 2025

admin

Ukrainian troops 'start surrendering' in key city but Kyiv says situation 'dynamic'

Ukrainian soldiers encircled by Russian forces in the key eastern city of Pokrovsk have started surrendering, the defence ministry in Moscow claims.

But Ukraine‘s military has pushed back on the report by the TASS state news agency, saying the situation is “difficult and dynamic”.

Kyiv has also claimed its positions in some districts of Pokrovsk have improved despite its city being infiltrated by Russian troops.

Latest: Russian attacks are ‘nuclear terrorism’, Ukraine warns

Ukraine is increasing its number of assault troops in the area, the 7th Rapid Response Corps said on Facebook.

And Ukrainian troops are also working to cut Moscow’s military logistics routes, it added.

The Russian defence ministry also said its forces defeated a team of Ukrainian special forces that headed to Pokrovsk in a bid to prevent Russian forces from advancing further into the city.

‘Footage of Ukrainian troops after surrendering’

It later posted videos of two Ukrainian troops who, it claimed, had surrendered.

The footage showed the men, one dressed in fatigues and the other in a dark green jacket, sat against a wall in a dark room, as they spoke of fierce fighting and encirclement by Russian forces.

The videos’ authenticity could not be independently verified, and there was no immediate public comment from Kyiv on the Russian ministry’s claims.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously acknowledged that some Russian units had infiltrated the city. But he maintained that Ukraine is tackling them.

He said Russia had deployed 170,000 troops in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, where Pokrovsk is located, in a major offensive to capture the city and claim a big battlefield victory.

‘Operation to destroy enemy forces’

Ukraine’s army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Saturday the situation in Pokrovsk remained “hardest” for Ukrainian forces, who were trying to push Russian troops out.

But he insisted there was no encirclement or blockade as Moscow has claimed.

“A comprehensive operation to destroy and push out enemy forces from Pokrovsk is ongoing. The main burden lies on the shoulders of the units of the armed forces of Ukraine, particularly UAV operators and assault units,” Mr Syrskyi said.

Why is Pokrovsk important?

One of Moscow’s key aims has been to take all of Ukraine’s industrial heartland of coal-rich Donbas, which comprises of the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Kyiv still controls about 10% of Donbas.

Capturing Pokrovsk, which Russian media has dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk”, and Kostiantynivka to its northeast, would give Moscow a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donetsk – Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

‘Key Russian fuel pipeline struck’

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military intelligence, known as HUR, has said its forces have hit an important fuel pipeline in the Moscow region that supplies the Russian army.

In a statement on Telegram, HUR said the operation late on Friday was a “serious blow” to Russia’s military logistics.

HUR said its forces struck the Koltsevoy pipeline, which is 250 miles long and supplies the Russian army with gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from refineries in Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow.

The operation, which targeted infrastructure near Ramensky district, destroyed all three fuel lines, HUR said.

The pipeline was capable of transporting up to three million tonnes of jet fuel, 2.8 million tonnes of diesel and 1.6 million tonnes of gasoline annually, HUR said.

Russia ‘targets gas production site’

Also overnight, Russia launched an attack on a gas production site in Poltava, in central Ukraine.

A fire broke out, the local administration said, but no injuries were reported.

Kyiv condemns ‘nuclear terrorism’

Ukraine’s foreign ministry has condemned Russian strikes this week on substations powering some of its nuclear plants.

It accused Russia of carrying out “targeted strikes on such substations” which “bear the hallmarks of nuclear terrorism”.

Elsewhere, a civilian died and 15 more were injured on Saturday morning after Russia struck the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine with a ballistic Iskander missile, local official Vitaliy Kim said.

A child was among those hurt in the strike, he added.