According to the American newspaper, in a report published on Tuesday, the United Nations has begun to cite a much lower number of deaths of women and children in Gaza, acknowledging that it has incomplete information about many of those who died during Israel’s military offensive in the Palestinian territory. On May 6, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its regularly updated online report that at least 9,500 women and 14,500 children were among the dead, for a total of 34,735 fatalities. Two days later, the U.N. said in another online update that 4,959 women, 7,797 children and 10,006 men had been killed. The American newspaper said that while the overall death toll has remained roughly the same, a U.N. official said that it was awaiting more identifying information from the authorities in Gaza on about 10,000 of the dead, who were not included in the new breakdown by women, men and children. The newspaper said that many international officials and experts familiar with how the Health Ministry in Gaza verifies deaths — using morgues and hospitals throughout the territory — say its numbers are generally reliable. The Health Ministry in Gaza, which is controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, said that its count of dead women and children is based on the total number of people whose identities could be fully verified — 24,840 individuals in all as of May 13. More than 10,000 other people have also died, the Health Ministry said, but the health authorities do not yet have their full names, identification numbers or other information needed to be certain of their identities. That is why they are not included in the count of dead women and children that the U.N. is now citing, the authorities said. “There are about 10,000-plus bodies that still need to be fully identified,” Farhan Haq, a U.N. spokesman, said on Monday, according to The New York Times. Mr. Haq added that “the details of these individuals — including children and women — will be re-established once the full identification process is complete.” The U.N. spokesman said that the United Nations was relying on the data from the Health Ministry in Gaza, as it has “in all previous conflicts.” The Israeli authorities, however, have said that they are suspicious of the Health Ministry’s count in Gaza. A spokesman for the Israeli military, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, noted that the Health Ministry does not distinguish in its count between combatants and civilians. Colonel Shoshani also said that Israel viewed every civilian death as a tragedy. After the United Nations released the lower number of documented deaths of women and children, Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, called the new figures “the miraculous resurrection of the dead in Gaza,” saying that the United Nations was relying on “false data from a terrorist organization.” The numbers cited by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, however, are not that different from those used by the United Nations. Mr. Netanyahu said last week that Israeli forces had killed about 14,000 Hamas fighters and 16,000 civilians, for a total of about 30,000, without elaborating on the source of those figures. The United States government considers the casualty figures provided by the health authorities in Gaza to be credible, and President Biden cited the overall death toll in his State of the Union address in March, the American newspaper said. See Also: EU insta Israel a parar imediatamente operação militar em Rafah (Portuguese version)