Historically, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has provided accurate numbers of civilian deaths. Third-party estimates by the UN and NGOs have always match

Historically, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has provided accurate numbers of civilian deaths. Third-party estimates by the UN and NGOs have always matched their numbers within a 10% margin of error. They did lie about 500 people dying due to a parking lot being blown up, though. It's a stain on their credibility. But how much of a stain? Do we disregard their previous track record because of it? I mean, it's possible that they see this current moment as judgement day, so they have decided to use up all of their historically built-up goodwill and start lying for info ops purposes, which would be an understandable strategy. On the other hand, the numbers they're giving don't appear unrealistic, and John Kirby has said that the US does not dispute that it's "in the thousands". So some number between 1000 and 7000 appears correct, and I would err more towards 4000-7000.