The White House has faced strong criticism from organizations like Human Rights Watch and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. for saying they did not believe figures from the Gaza health ministry saying that over seven thousand people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since the Israel-Hamas War began. President Biden said he has "no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using” because the health ministry is run by Hamas.
John Kirby, spokesperson for the National Security Council, was asked whether the U.S. had its own numbers. “We are doing the best we can,” he said, “to try to get an assessment of the scope of the casualties. And you can imagine we're pulling from multiple different sources.” He refused to “[spout] a whole number here,” but acknowledged that “we are convinced that there have been many thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza thus far in the conflict.” He said that the government considered “each and every one of them […] a tragedy.”
