The Associated Press (AP) on Friday published a study showing that fewer women and children have been killed in Gaza as the war between Israel and Hamas progressed as the result of changes in Israeli tactics.
According to the study, women and children accounted for 64% of deaths in October in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas massacre of October 7. By April, that figure had fallen to 34%. The total number of deaths also dropped.
In addition, fewer buildings have been damaged in recent months than at the beginning of the war.
Gabriel Epstein, a research assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East policy, said the drop in the number of women and children being killed is “definitely due to a change in the way the IDF is acting right now."
“That’s an easy conclusion, but I don’t think it’s been made enough,” Epstein said.
Despite the drop in the number and percentage of women and children being killed, the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry has continued to claim that 72-75% of fatalities have been women and children.
The AP report stated that the "underlying data clearly showed the percentage was well below" what the Gaza Health Ministry claimed.
Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director for Human Rights Watch, who was barred from Israel in 2019 for his support for the anti-Israel BDS movement, defended the Gaza Health Ministry's numbers and claimed that the deaths may be undercounted due to bodies being trapped under rubble.
The report is the latest instance in which the reported casualty figures from Gaza have been called into question.
Last month, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has revised its figures for the number of women and children who have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war down by nearly half.
On May 6, OCHA's daily report on casualties in Gaza stated that 9,500 women and 14,500 children had been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. The report relied on the figures provided by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry.
On May 8, two days later, OCHA's daily report slashed the number of women down to 4,959, while the number of children killed fell to 7,797 children.
The revised figures show 4,541 fewer deaths among women and 6,703 fewer deaths among children.
The Gaza Health Ministry figures have been criticized for inconsistencies and flaws in the casualty figures it has reported, from greatly overreporting the number of women and children killed, not differentiating between combatants and civilians, counting hundreds of casualties twice, relying on unreliable sources such a "media reports," and more.