Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have any information on the proportion of deaths in Gaza reported by the Gazan Ministry of Health represented by (1) civilians, and (2) Hamas operatives.

Like many of our partners, the UK Government uses data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to report on daily casualties in the current Gaza conflict. OCHA draws on figures issued from the Gazan Ministry of Health (MoH). Producing reliable casualty statistics in contexts of violent conflict is never straightforward. The MoH verify and identify the dead by age, gender and ID number.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has consulted experts, including from the London School of Tropical Medicine, OCHA, the World Health Organization and Every Casualty Counts, and interrogates relevant research. Experts assess that the total number of deaths in Gaza since 7 October 2023 estimated by the Gaza Ministry of Health is a reasonable figure, and likely to be an underestimate. MoH data does not differentiate between civilians and Hamas operatives.