Gaza: Trucks carry aid and coffins - but the UN calls it a drop in the ocean

media coffins BBC UN Hamas

Yesterday, on October 21, 2023 I saw a front-page article on BBC with the title:

"Gaza: Trucks carry aid and coffins - but the UN calls it a drop in the ocean"

What does a reader in the USA or Europe take away from this?

  • They need a lot of aid because the people are Gaza suffering a lot.

  • There are so many dead that the coffins are not enough. This is horrible.

The problem is that Muslims, at least in the Middle-East, do NOT use coffins for burial. They take the dead, wrap in some cloth and bury the corpse as it is, without a coffin.

(Side note, Jews don't use coffins either, except during military or state funerals.)

So why are there coffins in the title?

Is this just another PR lie of Hamas, as we saw in the case of the Al Ahli Arab hospital? Is this a lie by the UN? Is this just a bad reporting by the BBC?

If there really are coffins arriving in Gaza, then what is in them? Weapons? Ammunition?