Counting the dead in Gaza a difficult task

updated 9:19 p.m. ET Jan. 21, 2009

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip - Squatting in the rubble, his briefcase perched atop his knees, the human rights researcher interviewed residents of a house shelled by Israel as he compiled a list of Gazans killed and wounded during Israel's offensive against Hamas.

Yasser Abdel Ghafar's work is part of a painstaking endeavor by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights to count the casualties of the 23-day war. The group released a final tally Wednesday, saying 1,284 Gazans were killed and 4,336 wounded, the vast majority civilians.

Israel has accused Hamas of inflating the civilian casualties, saying it has the names of more than 700 Hamas militants killed in the fighting.

Disagreement over death toll
The two sides disagree on the death toll, particularly the ratio of combatants and civilians.

On Wednesday, fieldworker Abdel Ghafar worked to uncover the circumstances of how one family lost its home and two relatives.

As family members and neighbors sat on plastic chairs in an alley nearby, Abdel Ghafar spoke quietly to 28-year-old Rami Najar, who was in the three-story house in Khan Younis close to Israel's border when it came under fire last week.

His 75-year-old grandfather Khalil Najar and the elderly man's 7-year-old granddaughter, Alla, were killed in the attack, which reduced the house to rubble.

"Were there any armed men near the house?" Abdel Ghafar asked at one point. No, he didn't see any, said Rami Najar, whose right leg was wounded in the shelling.

Using his briefcase as a writing table, the researcher took down the survivor's story as the two sat on a huge chunk of concrete.

Nearly 300 children dead

Video   Despite threats, Hamas digs deeper Jan. 21: Smugglers near Gaza's Egyptian border Wednesday were openly rebuilding the tunnels used by Hamas to stock weapons, despite threats of another invasion by Israel if the tunnels are rebuilt. NBC's Richard Engel reports. Nightly News

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights has been publishing daily death toll updates with names, ages and whether the victims were civilians or combatants on its Web site since the beginning of the war, and expects to present the final list in several days.

The group said 894 of the dead were civilians, including 280 children and minors 17 and under, as well as 111 women.

The remaining 390 dead were members of Hamas or other militant groups. They included 167 civil police, many of them killed on the job, and 223 fighters, said Ibtissam Zakout, head of the group's research team. That figure is higher than the 158 dead fighters acknowledged by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other militant groups.

"Maybe they (the militants) were interested to show that they have fewer losses and casualties," said Zakout.

Others, including Gaza Health Ministry official, Dr. Moawiya Hassanain, have raised the possibility the militants buried some of their fighters in secret, without reporting their deaths.

Hassanain has kept a running list of casualty tolls since the start of the Dec. 27 fighting. He writes his tallies on lose sheets of paper, some stuffed in his coat pockets, and later feeds them into a computer data base.

The doctor, who says he's not affiliated with Hamas or any other Palestinian faction, works out of a tiny room with furniture he said dates back to pre-1967 Egyptian rule of Gaza. Equipped with just a beeper, a fax, a landline, two cell phones and a walkie-talkie, Hassanain dispatches dozens of ambulances and records the medics' first reports of casualties. In between, he accompanies ambulances taking the most seriously wounded to Israel and Egypt.

MORE FROM MIDEAST & N. AFRICA

Mideast & N. Africa Section Front

Iraq inquiry: Early U.S. push on Saddam Israel, Hamas near prisoner swap deal Newsweek: Reporter's ordeal in Tehran prison U.K. begins inquiry on Iraq war Amended Iraq election law still angers Sunnis Mideast & N. Africa Section Front   Add Mideast & N. Africa headlines to your news reader: