THE United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says nearly 3,000 children are at risk of dying before the eyes of their families as they have been cut off from treatment for severe acute malnutrition in southern Gaza.
The figures, based on reporting from UNICEF’s nutrition partners, come as only two of the Gaza Strip’s three stabilisation centres that treat seriously malnourished children are functioning.
‘Horrific images continue to emerge from Gaza of children dying before their families’ eyes due to the continued lack of food, nutrition supplies, and the destruction of healthcare services,’ said UNICEF Regional Director for West Asia and North Africa Adele Khodr.
‘Unless treatment can be quickly resumed for these 3,000 children, they are at immediate and serious risk of becoming critically ill, acquiring life-threatening complications, and joining the growing list of boys and girls who have been killed by this senseless, man-made deprivation.’
Malnourished children are at heightened risk of catching diseases and other health issues due to limited access to safe water, sewage overflow, infrastructure damage, and a lack of hygiene items.
According to medics, treating a child for acute malnutrition typically takes six to eight weeks of uninterrupted care and requires special therapeutic food, safe water, and other medical support.
‘Our warnings of mounting child deaths from a preventable combination of malnutrition, dehydration and disease should have mobilised immediate action to save children’s lives, and yet, this devastation continues,’ Khodr said.
‘With hospitals destroyed, treatments stopped and supplies scant, we are poising for more child suffering and deaths.’
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has added Israel’s military to a global list of offenders that have committed violations against children.
More grave violations against children were committed in Gaza and the occupied West Bank than anywhere else in the world last year, according to a UN report.
Israel’s inclusion in the list comes after eight months of devastating war killed more than 15,500 children in Gaza and have created what UN and aid officials call a man-made crisis of near-starvation.
With many of Gaza’s water wells and pipelines destroyed during the military campaign, clean water has become increasingly difficult to find, according to UNRWA, UN agency providing relief to Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip.
The UN agency said in a message on X that children often make long treks to fetch water, lugging heavy containers back to their homes or shelters.
‘Children are losing their childhood because of this war. This needs to stop now.’
UNRWA says 70% of the population is drinking salty and contaminated water since Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza in early October.
- The Zionist entity operates like a mafia-style enterprise to such an extent that even the International Criminal Court isn’t immune to its intimidatory tactics; with ICC officials and their families being threatened by Mossad.
Zionist intelligence agencies launched a war on the International Criminal Court in January 2015. This was when it was confirmed that Palestine would join the court after it was recognised as a state by the UN General Assembly.
Israel’s intelligence agencies have routinely surveilled the current ICC chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, his predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, and dozens of other ICC and UN officials.
Israeli intelligence also monitored materials that the Palestinian Authority submitted to the prosecutor’s office and surveilled employees at four Palestinian human rights organisations. These submissions are central to the probe.
Multiple agencies, including Mossad, the Shin Bet, and the National Security Council, were involved in addition to the occupation military.
Israel’s ministry of strategic affairs under Gilad Erdan was involved in the surveillance of Palestinian human rights organisations that were submitting reports to the ICC.
It is reported that the names of around 60 people who were under surveillance were written on a whiteboard, half of them Palestinians and half from other countries, including UN officials, and ICC personnel.
Mossad, the foreign intelligence agency of the Zionist colony, was involved in attempting to recruit senior ICC officials.
The former head of Mossad, Yossi Cohen, allegedly threatened the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in a series of secret meetings, in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation.
Cohen’s covert contacts with the then ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, took place in the period leading up to her decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine.
Cohen is alleged to have told her, ‘You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family’.
The ICC’s member states have elected a new chief prosecutor to take over from Fatou Bensouda.
Mossad also took a keen interest in Bensouda’s family members, and obtained transcripts of secret recordings of her husband. Regime officials then attempted to use the material to discredit the prosecutor.
Cohen met with Bensouda on a number of occasions, including ambushing her during a meeting with Joseph Kabila, the then president of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It appears Kabila was a Mossad agent of influence.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has slammed Israel for ‘threatening’ the judges of the International Criminal Court.
Mossad also targeted Bensouda’s successor, the current chief prosecutor, Karim Khan. The ICC confirmed there had been several forms of threats and communications that could be viewed as attempts to unduly influence its activities.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to have taken a keen interest in the operation, even sending intelligence teams instructions and areas of interest regarding their monitoring of ICC officials.
One source stressed that Netanyahu was ‘obsessed, obsessed, obsessed with finding out what materials the ICC was receiving’.
The ICC denounces threats against the top UN court after speculation about issuing arrest warrants for Israeli leaders over the Gaza war.
- An independent United Nations investigation has concluded that Israel has committed crimes against humanity, including the crime of ‘extermination,’ during its unrelenting aerial and ground offensives against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
‘The crimes against humanity of extermination; murder; gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys; forcible transfer; and torture and inhuman and cruel treatment were committed,’ the Commission of Inquiry said in a Wednesday report, due to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council next week.
The siege of Gaza represents a ‘collective punishment against the civilian population,’ according to the UN report, which censured Israel for withholding water, food, electricity, fuel and humanitarian aid for ‘strategic and political gains.’
The report went on to detail cases of sexual violence by Israeli forces in both Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Victims were interrogated or abused while naked or partially dressed, blindfolded, and were made to kneel or keep their hands tied behind their backs, the report found.
Many were forced to strip in public and walk while being sexually harassed, with their family members forced to watch. While both men and women were victims of sexual violence, men and boys were targeted in particular.
The report also highlighted the inflammatory rhetoric used by senior Israeli officials, including president Isaac Herzog and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which the UN commission said amounted to incitement and ‘may constitute other serious international crimes.’
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder has said that ‘so much suffering is being inflicted on Gaza.’
Some Israeli officials had called for ‘violence and the killing of Palestinians, the erasure of the Gaza Strip, vengeance, collective punishment, noting that there are no innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip, planning for new Israeli settlements on the rubble of the Gaza Strip and calling for the removal of Palestinians from Gaza to third states,’ the report further said.
‘The immense numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza and widespread destruction of civilian objects and infrastructure were the inevitable result of a strategy undertaken with intent to cause maximum damage, disregarding the principles of distinction, proportionality and adequate precautions,’ the commission pointed out.
It also urged Israel to immediately call a ceasefire, end its practices of sexual abuse against Palestinians, and to allow access for further investigations.
‘It is imperative that all those who have committed crimes be held accountable,’ commission chair Navi Pillay said.
‘The only way to stop the recurring cycles of violence, including aggression and retribution … is to ensure strict adherence to international law,’ she added.
Israel waged the atrocious onslaught against the Gaza Strip, targeting hospitals, residences, and houses of worship after Palestinian resistance movements launched a surprise attack, dubbed Operation al-Aqsa Storm, against the usurping regime on October 7.
At least 37,164 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, and another 84,832 individuals have sustained injuries. More than 1.7 million people have been internally displaced during the war as well.
