40,000 and counting: Struggle to keep track of Gaza deaths

With Gaza mainly in ruins after more than ten months of war, the Hamas-run territory's health ministry has struggled to count the death toll, which on Thursday surpassed 40,000. Above, Palestinians evacuate the area following an Israeli airstrike on the Sousi mosque in Gaza City on October 9, 2023.

Israel has repeatedly questioned the credibility of the daily figures put out by the ministry, and US President Joe Biden did so, too, in the early stages of the war. Above, an aerial view of buildings destroyed by Israeli air strikes in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in Gaza City.

A man holds a child, both injured in an Israeli bombardment, as they receive treatment at a trauma ward in Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, located in the southern Gaza Strip, on October 24, 2023, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas.

A mother is comforted by other women as she mourns after the recovery of the body of her child from the beneath the rubble of a collapsed building in the aftermath of Israeli bombardment in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on May 14, 2024.

People search for survivors and the bodies of victims through the rubble of buildings destroyed during the Israeli bombardment in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 26, 2023.

An injured Palestinian woman covered in dust and blood hugs an injured girl child at the hospital following the Israeli bombardment of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on November 15, 2023.

A plume of smoke rises in the sky of Gaza City during an Israeli airstrike.

A Palestinian man evacuates a wounded girl from the site of an Israeli strike on the Zawayda area of the central Gaza Strip on December 30, 2023, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Hamas movement.

A young Palestinian girl has her hand held by a relative as a medic treats her wounds at a hospital following an Israeli air strike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

A man holding the hand of a boy killed in an Israeli bombardment mourns at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Nuseirat on May 27, 2024.

Shams, the son of 47-year-old Ahmad Abu Taha, hugs his late father's shoes as he weeps in Khan Yunis following Israeli bombardment of the southern Gaza Strip city on July 22, 2024.

This image grab from a handout video released by the Israeli army on February 29, 2024, shows what the army says are Gazans around aid trucks in Gaza City. Israeli forces shot dead 104 people when a crowd rushed towards aid trucks on February 29, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said. Israeli sources confirmed that troops opened fire at Palestinians rushing toward aid trucks in Gaza, with one saying soldiers thought they "posed a threat" to troops.

A woman cries over the grave of a loved one at the start of the Eid al-Fitr festival, marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, at a cemetery in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on April 10, 2024.