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UN Rapporteur Promotes Widely Derided Report Claiming 186,000 People Have Died in Gaza War
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The United Nations’ special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories has circulated a heavily disputed and unreliable claim from a medical journal that 186,000 people have been killed in Gaza as a result of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
“If one includes both direct & indirect deaths from Israel’s assault, the death toll in Gaza goes up to 186,000 people, according to the medical journal [The Lancet]. That’s 1 in every 12 Gaza inhabitants killed in the last 9 months of genocide,” Francesca Albanese posted on X/Twitter.
If one includes both direct & indirect deaths from Israel’s assault, the death toll in Gaza goes up to 186,000 people, according to the medical journal @TheLancet. That’s 1 in every 12 Gaza inhabitants killed in the last 9 months of genocide. https://t.co/pOvhnyKMPW
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) July 8, 2024
Last week, The Lancet, a prominent medical journal, published an article titled, “Counting the Dead in Gaza: Difficult but Essential.” In a one-page correspondence letter, the authors argue that as many as 186,000 Palestinians may have perished in Gaza, amounting to 8 percent of the enclave’s population. The correspondence letter, which was not a peer-reviewed academic study, arrived at this number by taking the Hamas-supplied casualty figure of 37,396 and multiplying it by five, citing previous research that indicates there are usually at least four indirect deaths in combat for every direct death.
Critics shredded the calculation. Salo Aizenberg, a board member with Honest Reporting, lambasted the “fraudulent letter” in a thread on X/Twitter. Aizenberg pointed out that the health authorities in Gaza controlled by Hamas, the terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza by slaughtering over 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7, already includes “indirect deaths” in their casualty figures, meaning that the letter’s authors “double count deaths with multiplier.” These supposed “indirect death” numbers, which typically consider casualties by result of famine, disease, and lack of medical attention, have already been included in United Nations reports.
The letter inaccurately stated that the casualty figures produced by Hamas-controlled authorities are “accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services.” Israel has heavily disputed the reported causality figures and accused Hamas of inflating the death toll in Gaza for the sake of tarnishing the Jewish state’s international reputation. Experts have cast doubt on the reliability of casualty figures coming out of Gaza for overcounting civilian deaths and not distinguishing between civilians and combatants.
The authors of the study state that Gaza authorities have had to “augment” their casualty numbers using figures from third parties, such as “reliable media sources and first responders.” Aizenberg questioned this claim, stating that reputable international media is not on the ground in much of Gaza and Hamas has not presented evidence that first responders are counting bodies in the war-torn enclave. The authors also assert that 35 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure has been “destroyed” as a result of the war while simultaneously citing a UN report that claims 12 percent of the enclave has been destroyed.
Despite the letter’s alleged research flaws, the missive spread like wildfire on social media.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state. In the months following Hamas’ brutal assault on the Jewish state, Albanese has accused Israel of enacting a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the Oct. 7 attacks.
The United Nations has recently launched a probe against Albanese over allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations. Albanese has also celebrated the anti-Israel protesters rampaging across US college campuses, saying they represent a “revolution” and that they give her “hope.”
The post UN Rapporteur Promotes Widely Derided Report Claiming 186,000 People Have Died in Gaza War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Readies for a Nationwide Strike on Sunday
Demonstrators hold signs and pictures of hostages, as relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages kidnapped during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas protest demanding the release of all hostages in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Itai Ron
i24 News – The families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza are calling on for a general strike to be held on Sunday in an effort to compel the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a deal with Hamas for the release of their loved ones and a ceasefire. According to Israeli officials, 50 hostages now remain in Gaza, of whom 20 are believed to be alive.
The October 7 Council and other groups representing bereaved families of hostages and soldiers who fell since the start of the war declared they were “shutting down the country to save the soldiers and the hostages.”
While many businesses said they would join the strike, Israel’s largest labor federation, the Histadrut, has declined to participate.
Some of the country’s top educational institutions, including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University, declared their support for the strike.
“We, the members of the university’s leadership, deans, and department heads, hereby announce that on Sunday, each and every one of us will participate in a personal strike as a profound expression of solidarity with the hostage families,” the Hebrew University’s deal wrote to students.
The day will begin at 6:29 AM, to commemorate the start of the October 7 attack, with the first installation at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square in Tel Aviv. Further demonstrations are planned at dozens of traffic intersections.
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Netanyahu ‘Has Become a Problem,’Says Danish PM as She Calls for Russia-Style Sanctions Against Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
i24 News – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has become a “problem,” his Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen said Saturday, adding she would try to put pressure on Israel over the Gaza war.
“Netanyahu is now a problem in himself,” Frederiksen told Danish media, adding that the Israeli government is going “too far” and lashing out at the “absolutely appalling and catastrophic” humanitarian situation in Gaza and announced new homes in the West Bank.
“We are one of the countries that wants to increase pressure on Israel, but we have not yet obtained the support of EU members,” she said, specifying she referred to “political pressure, sanctions, whether against settlers, ministers, or even Israel as a whole.”
“We are not ruling anything out in advance. Just as with Russia, we are designing the sanctions to target where we believe they will have the greatest effect.”
The devastating war in Gaza began almost two years ago, with an incursion into Israel of thousands of Palestinian armed jihadists, who perpetrated the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
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As Alaska Summit Ends With No Apparent Progress, Zelensky to Meet Trump on Monday
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks at the press conference after the opening session of Crimea Platform conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, 23 August 2023. The Crimea Platform – is an international consultation and coordination format initiated by Ukraine. OLEG PETRASYUK/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – After US President Donald Trump hailed the “great progress” made during a meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he was set to meet Trump on Monday at the White House.
“There were many, many points that we agreed on, most of them, I would say, a couple of big ones that we haven’t quite gotten there, but we’ve made some headway,” Trump told reporters during a joint press conference after the meeting.
Many observers noted, however, that the subsequent press conference was a relatively muted affair compared to the pomp and circumstance of the red carpet welcome, and the summit produced no tangible progress.
Trump and Putin spoke briefly, with neither taking questions, and offered general statements about an “understanding” and “progress.”
Putin, who spoke first, agreed with Trump’s long-repeated assertion that Russia never would have invaded Ukraine in 2022 had Trump been president instead of Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump said “many points were agreed to” and that “just a very few” issues were left to resolve, offering no specifics and making no reference to the ceasefire he’s been seeking.