First War Tally: 1,284 Gazans Dead And 4,336 Wounded

[babylonsister]

First war tally: 1,284 Gazans dead, 4,336 wounded

KARIN LAUB
AP Features

Jan 21, 2009 17:59 EST


Squatting in the rubble, his briefcase perched atop his knees, the human rights researcher interviewed residents of a house shelled by Israel as he compiled a list of Gazans killed and wounded during Israel's offensive against Hamas.

Yasser Abdel Ghafar's work is part of a painstaking endeavor by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights to count the casualties of the 23-day war. The group released a final tally Wednesday, saying 1,284 Gazans were killed and 4,336 wounded, the vast majority civilians.

Israel has accused Hamas of inflating the civilian casualties, saying it has the names of more than 700 Hamas militants killed in the fighting.

The two sides disagree on the death toll, particularly the ratio of combatants and civilians.

more...

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/01/first_war_tally_1284_gazans_dead_4336_wounded.php

[azurnoir]

1. Thanks

I saw the original AP story last night, it will be weeks if not months before an official count is finally reached but the scope of this is truly horrendous.

on a side note it is a sad testimony to something here on DU that this thread gets crickets while a thread about some Italian reporter from some Italian paper whom if you google him you find he has had quite historically a wild hair up some orifice over Gaza who claims he did his own count and the death toll can not be more than 600 gets the little flame and not for the reasons you might first assume

[ohio2007]

2. The two sides disagree on the death toll, particularly the ratio of combatants and civilians.

any outside reporters giving updates

or are they being shot as collaborators ?


http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1232643736968&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[Scurrilous]

3. Counting casualties of Gaza's war

<snip>

"In any conflict the number of deaths - of combatants and civilians - is a highly sensitive topic.

Numbers can be used for propaganda purposes by all sides and they can play a role in determining perceptions of whether the sides have kept within international law's rules of keeping civilian casualties to a minimum.

In the Israeli offensive on Gaza, far more Palestinians, including women and children, were killed than Israelis. But the exact figures have been disputed.

During the fighting, the main source for the number of Palestinian casualties came from the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

It said 1,314 Palestinians were killed in the conflict, 412 of them children."

<snip>

"But now another organisation has given an account of the death figures.

The Al Mazen Centre for Human Rights has been working to verify the number of fatalities.

Its numbers are much closer to those of published by the Ministry of Health.

The Al Mazen Centre says it only confirms a death after it has interviewed individual families, and methodically checked names, ages and addresses.

It has told the BBC that 1,268 people were killed, among them 288 children and 103 women.

Dr Issam Younis, the Director of Al Mazen, said his field workers were documenting every death.

"We investigate every case, we meet their families and relatives to have details from the first source and we verify every case."

Dr Younis said 85% of those killed were not combatants, whom he defined as those taking up arms against Israeli troops.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7855070.stm