A nonpartisan watchdog group sent a letter to top Pentagon officials this week requesting all information that led to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s public claim that more than 25,000 Palestinians had been killed in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7 — a figure based on data supplied by the Hamas militant group. In the letter, Center to Advance Security in America (CASA) Director James Fitzpatrick questions whether publicly reciting those numbers — which the Pentagon later acknowledged came from Hamas data and couldn’t be independently confirmed by U.S. analysts — may have aided the group the U.S. and Israel consider a terrorist organization in pushing its public narrative that Israel is indiscriminately killing scores of innocent civilians in Gaza.
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