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Despite All Evidence, BBC Still Defends Hamas Casualty Figures

The BBC logo is seen at the entrance at Broadcasting House, the BBC headquarters in central London. Photo by Vuk Valcic / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

In the early hours of April 23, the BBC News website published a report by the BBC Jerusalem bureau’s Yolande Knell under the headline “Gaza health ministry denies manipulating death toll figures.”

Only in paragraph eight do readers discover the purpose of Knell’s report:

Recently, several media reports have raised questions about the reliability of the statistics by highlighting anomalies between the August and October 2024 and March 2025 lists of fatalities. The reports focus on how some 3,000 names of people originally identified as fatalities were removed from later revised lists.

Among those media reports is an article titled “Hamas ‘quietly drops’ thousands of deaths from casualty figures” — which was published by the Telegraph on April 1 and cites research carried out by Salo Aizenberg showing that 3,374 names, including over a thousand children, had been dropped from Hamas’ March 2025 list of supposedly identified and confirmed casualties.

On April 5, Sky News published a report titled “Hundreds of names removed from official Gaza war death list” which quotes “[t]he head of the statistics team at Gaza’s health ministry, Zaher Al Wahidi”:

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. […]

“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.

Over two weeks later, the same Hamas health ministry statistician (who, as readers may recall, was credited by the authors of a paper published at the Lancet in January 2025) was quoted in Yolande Knell’s report:

A Gazan health official, Zaher al-Wahidi, denied to the BBC that victims had vanished or that there was a lack of transparency, insisting: “The health ministry works towards having accurate data with high credibility.

“In every list that gets shared, there is a greater verification and revision of the list. We cannot say that the health ministry removes names. It’s not a removal process, rather it is a revision and verification process.”

Al-Wahidi’s admission that the names on successive lists are subject to revision and verification is ample indication of the reliability of those lists and the ensuing statistics that the BBC has uncritically quoted and promoted as being reliable for the past 18 months, in line with an editorial policy that has existed at least since 2014.

Knell’s report later includes the following quote:

“It seems like they’re actually updating the lists more in real time, as more information appears,” says Professor Mike Spagat of Royal Holloway College, chair of Every Casualty Counts, an independent civilian casualty monitoring organisation. “We should have regarded the previous lists as a little bit more provisional than I had assumed.” [emphasis added]

The Sky News report includes a quote from the same person:

“”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.”

Nevertheless, Knell suggests to her readers that the Hamas-supplied figures can be considered reliable because they are used by “UN agencies” and “the media”:

The figures are cited with attribution, by UN agencies and widely in the media.

While Knell does note the failure of the Hamas supplied data to distinguish between civilians and combatants, she does not explain that that policy is deliberate and long-standing:

The list does not distinguish between civilians and members of Palestinian armed groups who are killed in the war, and Israel has accused Hamas of inflating the percentages of women and children.

Neither does she clarify that the Hamas-supplied lists most likely include casualties caused by shortfall missiles launched by Gaza Strip-based terrorist organizations as well as Gazans killed or executed by Hamas.

Knell’s reference to Hamas “inflating the percentages of women and children” as solely an Israeli accusation fails to inform BBC audiences that for months on end, BBC journalists promoted Hamas claims that 70% of the casualties were women and children, despite the absence of verified data to support that claim.

Later in her report, Knell states:

Israel periodically estimates the number of Palestinian fighters killed. At the start of this year, it assessed that 20,000 members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad were among the dead. In mid-April it said there had been “more than 100 targeted eliminations” in the past month.

She however fails to inform her readers that in February 2024, the BBC dismissed Israeli assessments of the number of terrorists killed by citing the same 70% women and children mantra which it later abandoned.

Members of the corporation’s funding public may be wondering why the BBC News website chose to publish this report by Yolande Knell, given that it has no new information to add to what was provided in the Sky News report published 16 days earlier.

One possible explanation lies in the fact that for 18 months, the BBC has uncritically quoted and promoted Hamas’ claims concerning casualty figures, despite faulty methodologychanges in the methodology used, repeated removals of names, the inclusion of natural deaths and people killed in previous rounds of conflict, and the absence of independent verification.

This report by Knell would appear to be just yet another chapter in the BBC’s repeated attempts to justify that dubious editorial policy.

Hadar Sela is the co-editor of CAMERA UK – an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared. 

The post Despite All Evidence, BBC Still Defends Hamas Casualty Figures first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.

Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.

“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”

GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’

Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.

“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.

“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.

“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.

After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”

RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL

Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”

Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.

“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”

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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco

Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.

People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.

“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”

Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.

On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.

Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.

On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.

“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.

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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.

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