Expert claims Hamas’s Gaza death toll exaggerated or faked

Wyner pointed out inconsistencies between Hamas’s own admissions of casualties among its fighters and the data provided by the Gaza Health Ministry

March 14, 2024

By i24News

Reprinted from i24News

A statistics expert has raised serious doubts about the accuracy of casualty figures reported by Hamas-controlled authorities in Gaza, suggesting that the numbers may have been exaggerated or even fabricated entirely.

Professor Abraham Wyner, a renowned expert in Statistics and Data Science at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, conducted a thorough analysis of data from the Gaza Health Ministry.

 In an article published by Tablet Magazine on March 7, Wyner revealed his findings, pointing out several inconsistencies in the reported data.

One of the key anomalies Wyner identified was the steady increase in reported deaths, which he described as statistically impossible. He noted that the total death count appeared to rise at a consistent rate each day, without the expected variations that would be typical in a conflict zone.

Wyner also highlighted discrepancies in the reported deaths of women and children, which did not correlate as expected with variations in the overall death toll.

Wyner’s analysis further revealed a negative correlation between the reported deaths of men and women, which he described as another red flag indicating potential data manipulation.

He suggested that the Gaza Health Ministry may have arbitrarily set daily death totals and distributed them among different demographic groups, rather than accurately reporting casualties.

Moreover, Wyner pointed out inconsistencies between Hamas’s own admissions of casualties among its fighters and the data provided by the Gaza Health Ministry.

According to Hamas, thousands of its fighters have been killed, yet the reported death toll includes a disproportionately high number of women and children. This raises questions about the accuracy of the overall casualty figures and the classification of combatants versus civilians.

In his conclusion, Wyner emphasized the difficulty of determining the true extent of civilian casualties in Gaza, given the lack of independent verification and the potential for data manipulation by Hamas authorities. He cautioned that the reported civilian casualty count is likely to be greatly exaggerated, and the truth may never be fully known.

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