BBC Verify: Where do the Gaza death figures come from?
The ongoing death toll in Gaza is released by the enclave's health ministry, which is run by Hamas.
The ministry says that when a death occurs as a result of an Israeli strike or attack, a hospital registers the details into a computer. The details logged include full name, age, ID number and sex.
This information is transferred daily from individual hospitals into a central computer system and compiled by the ministry. Once processed, the data is provided to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
The PCBS told the BBC the figures only cover those who have died in hospital - it does not account for those killed under buildings or who cannot be identified.
A specific cause of death is normally logged but this is currently not happening due to the extremely high numbers being processed, PCBS president Ola Awak-Shakshir told the BBC.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said that any information provided by a terrorist organisation should be viewed with caution.
But World Health Organization spokesman Richard Brennan said last week he believed the figures were trustworthy, adding: Were confident that the information management systems that the ministry of health has put in place over the years stand up to analysis. The data over the years has been quite solid.
-BBC
The WHO thinks the death tolls can be trusted. It's not said in
this article but, the UN also thinks the tolls can be trusted. That's good enough for me.