The Ministry of Health announced on Wednesday a new toll of 39,677 people killed by Israeli forces since the war began, which has now entered its eleventh month.

The ministry’s statement reported that at least 24 people were killed in the past 24 hours, adding that 91,645 individuals have been injured in the Gaza Strip since October 7.

Several United Nations agencies that operate in Gaza said the figures are credible and international organizations frequently cite them.

Data collection 
 

Two AFP correspondents witnessed health facilities enter deaths in the ministry's database.

Health officials in Gaza first identify the bodies of the dead, by the visual recognition of a relative or friend, or by the recovery of personal items.

The deceased's information is then entered into the health ministry's digital database, usually including name, gender, birth date, and ID number.

When bodies cannot be identified because they are unrecognizable or when no one claims them, staff record the death under a number, alongside all the information they were able to gather.

Any distinguishing marks that may help with later identification, whether personal items or a birthmark, are collected and photographed.

Central registry
 

The Palestinian health ministry has issued several statements setting out its procedures for compiling the death toll.

In public hospitals, the "personal information and identity number" of every Palestinian killed during the Israeli war are entered into the hospital's database as soon as they are pronounced dead.

The data is then sent to the health ministry's central registry on a daily basis.

For those who die in private hospitals and clinics, their information is taken down on a form that must be sent to the ministry within 24 hours to be added to the central registry, a ministry statement said.

The ministry's "information center" then verifies the data entries to "ensure they do not contain any duplicates or mistakes", before saving them in the database, the statement added.

Gaza residents are also encouraged by Palestinian authorities to report any deaths in their families on a designated government website. The data is used for the ministry's verifications.

'High correlation' 
 

An investigation conducted by Airways, an NGO focused on the impact of war on civilians, analyzed the data entries for 3,000 of the dead and found "a high correlation" between the ministry's data and what Palestinian civilians reported online, with 75 percent of publicly reported names also appearing on the ministry's list.

The study found that the ministry's figures had become "less accurate" as the war dragged on, a development it attributed to the heavy damage to health infrastructure resulting from the war.

For instance, at southern Gaza's Nasser Hospital, one of the few still at least partly functioning, only 50 out of 400 computers still work, its director Atef al-Hout told AFP.

The press office in Gaza estimates that nearly 70 percent of the roughly 40,000 dead are children (at least 16,300) or women (about 11,000).

Several UN agencies, including the agency in charge of Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), have said the ministry's figures are credible.

"In the past -- the five, six cycles of conflict in the Gaza Strip -- these figures were considered as credible and no one ever really challenged these figures,", the agency's chief Philippe Lazzarini said in October.

A study by the British medical review The Lancet estimated that 186,000 deaths can be attributed to the war in Gaza, directly or indirectly as a result of the humanitarian crisis it has triggered.