Human Rights Watch said it discovered the discrepancy as part of a larger investigation of civilian deaths in Lebanon. The bombardment of Qana on Sunday and pictures of dead children pulled from the wreckage led to an international uproar.
A re-examination by The Associated Press, prompted by the Human Rights Watch report and involving interviews with officials at the Lebanese Red Cross and civil defense corps, reached the same conclusion -- that 28 people died at Qana.
The AP had previously reported 56 dead, based on figures from the Lebanese Red Cross.
Some additional bodies may be buried in the rubble, Lebanese officials said Thursday. But others cast doubt on that. The human rights group said 13 villagers were listed as missing, but their families were not sure where they were and some may have fled north before the bombing.
The initial casualty figure that Human Rights Watch used -- 54 -- was based on a list compiled by Lebanese officials from witnesses and villagers that gave the names of 63 people who had taken refuge in the three-story building when it was attacked, said Peter Bouckaert, director of emergencies at Human Rights Watch.
Recovery teams pulled 27 bodies from the rubble and one of the wounded died later in the hospital, pushing the death toll to 28, Bouckaert told the AP in an interview Thursday.
George Kitane, head of Lebanese Red Cross paramedics, also said Thursday that so far 28 people, including 19 children, had been confirmed killed. He said the organization had been told bodies were under the rubble, "but we will need bulldozers for such work."
"No bodies have been removed since Sunday," he said.
Bouckaert said Thursday that Human Rights Watch had no reason at first to doubt the initial figure of 54, based on information from the government and villagers.
"There was no conscious effort by the Lebanese authorities to inflate the death toll," the human rights campaigner from Belgium said. "They simply believed that there were 54 people buried under the rubble because there were only nine survivors they could locate," and they thought 63 people had been in the building.
He blamed the discrepancy on chaos and confusion.
"It was simply a very chaotic situation," he said. "Many of the villagers had fled between the time of the attack and the time of the rescue effort" and were assumed dead under the rubble.
The Lebanese Red Cross gave a figure of 56 deaths at the time, which the AP used in its reports. An Associated Press reporter counted 27 bodies on the day of the bombing at the government hospital in the port city of Tyre.
Civil Defense official Abdel-Raouf Jradi, who was in charge of the rescue operation, confirmed Thursday that 27 bodies were taken to the Tyre hospital from Qana that day. All the bodies were identified and they included 15 children under age 12, including a 9-month-old baby. A 95-year-old man also was among the dead.
Human Rights Watch now lists 13 people as missing.
"Families of the missing aren't sure where those 13 people are. It is possible there still is someone buried under the rubble ... but recovery teams are skeptical" of that, Bouckaert told AP.
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