His family brought the bodies here on an electric rickshaw or tuk-tuk. They found them in their house in eastern Gaza City after Israeli shelling hit the family home. Asma Hirzallah, Mayar, 5, and Abdullah, 3, were killed. The hospital asked for their full names and ID numbers," explains Alam, referring to the numbers all Palestinians are given in a population registry administered by Israel.

They gave us a paper to confirm they were martyred and told us to come back for the death certificate. Now we don't know where to go to bury them as the cemeteries are in areas under Israeli control. "At least 51,266 people have been killed in the 18 months since the Gaza war began, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, with nearly a third of the dead aged under 18.Israel has repeatedly challenged the accuracy of the Palestinian fatalities list in terms of overall numbers, and in particular, the demographic breakdown  claiming it is used as Hamas propaganda. The figures are cited with attribution, by UN agencies and widely in the media. The list does not distinguish between civilians and members of Palestinian armed groups who are killed in the war, and Israel has accused Hamas of inflating the percentages of women and children. Recently, several media reports have raised questions about the reliability of the statistics by highlighting anomalies between the August and October 2024 and March 2025 lists of fatalities. The reports focus on how some 3,000 names of people originally identified as fatalities were removed from later revised lists. (BBC)