approx US death toll on 9-11 2,996. Gaza approx last count over 14,000 dead Palestinians and approx over 10,000 were women and children. Not sure what current count is and it keeps rising. Waiting on missing persons under the rubble count.....
Even a conservative assessment of the reported Gaza casualty figures shows that the rate of death during Israel’s assault has few precedents in this century, experts say.
www.nytimes.com
I think the actual death count will never be ascertained.
Snip
JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinian health officials in Gaza said Tuesday that they have lost the ability to count the dead because of the collapse of parts of the enclave’s health system and the difficulty of retrieving bodies from areas overrun by Israeli tanks and troops.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza,
which carefully tracked casualties over the first five weeks of war, gave its most recent death toll of 11,078 on Nov. 10. The United Nations humanitarian office, which cites the Health Ministry death toll in its regular reports, still refers to 11,078 as the last verified death toll from the war.
The challenges involved in verifying the number of dead have mounted as Israel’s ground invasion has intensified and at times severed phone and internet service and sown chaos across the territory.
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Employees responsible for tallying the dead have been scattered across the southern Gaza Strip and struggle to coordinate with each other and with hospitals due to frequent communication outages.
Every hospital in the northern strip has shut down except for the Awda Hospital, a private facility in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya, just north of Gaza City, where doctors conduct surgery with flashlights and treat patients on blood-slicked floors.
“It’s chaos. There are bombs all around us, air attacks, tank attacks, snipers and gunshots,” said hospital Director Ahmad Muhanna. “We are trying to keep the best estimates we can, but with each second, more patients come and it gets harder.”
In many cases now, death certificates are nonexistent, he said.
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Without a clear tally of the deaths, advocates worry that the conflict will grind on without accountability. They say the numbers matter because they can have a direct impact on policy and the global sense of urgency.
“We have to get these numbers for history,” said Shawan Jabarin, director of the Palestinian human rights group al-Haq. “The accountability is one thing and to teach the next generations exactly what happened. It’s important for transitional justice, for peace.”
Palestinian health officials in Gaza say they have lost the ability to count the dead because of the collapse of the enclave's health system and the difficulty of retrieving bodies from areas overrun by Israeli tanks and troops.
apnews.com
Just as there are holocaust deniers which only legislation curbed, there will be bombardment deniers in the future.
It makes me sick to my stomach that such a continuing body count remains necessary in a volume which renders them countless.
