IT WAS World Children’s Day on Monday, when it emerged that at least 5,500 children have been killed in Gaza since October 7th.
According to the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), which issued its latest situation report on Sunday, nearly 884,000 internally displaced persons are sheltering in 154 UNRWA installations across all five governorates of the Gaza Strip.
‘Just getting into one of the shelters makes you burst into tears,’ an UNRWA employee said. ‘Children looking for food and water and standing in queues for over six hours just to get a piece of bread or a bottle of water. People are literally sleeping on the streets here in Khan Younis as thousands keep escaping from the north.’
In less than 24 hours, two UNRWA schools sheltering displaced families were hit, causing ‘many deaths’ and injuries, mostly of women and children, in addition to other deadly incidents across Gaza and the West Bank against the backdrop of soaring humanitarian needs, UNRWA said.
Philippe Lazzarini, who heads UNRWA, said in a statement on Sunday that the attacks are ‘just cruel’.
‘I watched with sheer horror reports from an attack on the Al-Fakhoura UNRWA school-turned-shelter in northern Gaza,’ he said.
Classrooms sheltering displaced families were hit and at least 24 people were reported killed in the strike.
Up to 7,000 people were in the school at the time, the UNRWA chief said.
Last Friday, following strikes on the UNRWA Al-Falah/Zeitoun school in Gaza City, ambulances could not reach the school, where 4,000 people were sheltering.
Since 7th October, at least 176 people sheltering in the agency’s schools were reported killed and 800 wounded during the Israeli bombardments, Lazzarini said.
‘The large number of UNRWA facilities hit and the number of civilians killed cannot just be “collateral damage”,’ he said, adding that the UN agency routinely shares the buildings’ coordinates with all parties to the conflict.
‘This vicious war is reaching a point of no return when all rules are disrespected, in overt disregard for civilian lives,’ he said, calling and appealing ‘once again for humanity to prevail and for a humanitarian ceasefire right now.’
Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said in a statement on Sunday: ‘The horrendous events of the past 48 hours in Gaza beggar belief.
‘The killing of so many people at schools turned shelters, hundreds fleeing for their lives from Al-Shifa Hospital amid continuing displacement of hundreds of thousands in southern Gaza are actions which fly in the face of the basic protections civilians must be afforded under international law,’
Türk stressed that failing to adhere to these rules may constitute war crimes.
He said at least three other schools hosting displaced Palestinians have also been attacked.
‘This must stop,’ he said. ‘Humanity must come first. A ceasefire – on humanitarian and human rights grounds – is desperately needed. Now.’
A United Nations statement on Sunday said: ‘Spikes in casualties, attacks on schools and shelters, including the death of a UN worker, and crippling fuel shortages blocking aid deliveries rippled across Gaza over the weekend, as the World Health Organisation (WHO) helped to evacuate 31 babies in critical condition at the besieged Al-Shifa Hospital and the UN chief called for a humanitarian ceasefire amid the ongoing Israel-Palestine crisis.
‘Top UN officials echoed that call to improve conditions for Gaza’s 2.3 million people, 1.7 million of which have been displaced since the 7th October Hamas attack in Israel resulted in the killing of 1,200 Israelis and capture of 240 hostages.
‘Since then, more than 11,000 people have been killed in besieged Gaza.
‘This war is having a staggering and unacceptable number of civilian casualties, including women and children, every day,’ UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in the statement on Sunday.
‘This must stop. I reiterate my call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.’
The UN statement continued: ‘Israeli military operations have been continuing inside and around Al-Shifa Hospital, with UN colleagues that visited the site on Saturday describing it as a “death zone”.
‘On Sunday, WHO and humanitarian partners helped to evacuate infants in critical condition.’
‘Medical personnel, patients and civilians had fled the hospital over the weekend, ordered to do so by the Israeli military,’ UNRWA’s chief Lazzarini said, adding that hundreds were seen making their way south on foot, at great risk to their lives, health and safety.
‘WHO reported on Sunday that six Palestine Red Crescent ambulances transported the babies to Al-Helal Al-Emirati Maternity Hospital, where they are receiving urgent care.’
‘Further missions are being planned to urgently transport remaining patients and health staff out of Al-Shifa Hospital,’ WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a social media post on Sunday.
As of 10 November, over 11,078 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since 7th October; two thirds of them are reportedly children and women, the UNRWA report said.
Due to the collapse in the Gaza’s Ministry of Health services and communications in the north, casualty data has not been updated for the last five days.
Media reports indicate the number of Palestinian deaths is nearly 12,000.
Israel reported that around 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed in Israel, the vast majority on 7th October, according to the UN humanitarian agency (OCHA).
On Saturday, one UNRWA colleague was killed in the northern area due to Israeli strikes. In total, 104 colleagues have been killed since the beginning of the war, the highest number of UN aid workers killed in a conflict in the Organisation’s history, according to the UN Palestine refugee agency.
Violent incidents, deaths and injuries struck several areas of the West Bank, including the Fara’a and Jenin refugee camps, according to UNRWA’s situation report.
OCHA reported that since 7th October, 198 Palestinians, including 52 children, have been killed by Israeli security forces and eight, including one child, by Israeli settlers.
In the Balata refugee camp in Nablus on Saturday, Israeli security forces launched an operation, entering with an armoured bulldozer and mobilising a drone that fired missiles towards the Fatah office, killing five, injuring two others and damaging homes and shops, according to UNRWA.
Addressing the UN Security Council last week, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said a child is killed every 10 minutes in the besieged Gaza Strip.
‘Hospital corridors crammed with the injured, the sick, the dying. Morgues overflowing. Surgery without anaesthesia. Tens of thousands of displaced people sheltering at hospitals,’ Tedros told the council, pointing to the grave humanitarian catastrophe.
The concern was earlier echoed by UNICEF spokesperson James Elder at a press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, describing Gaza as a ‘graveyard for thousands of children’.
Earlier last week, the country director for CARE International in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, also said that almost 70 per cent of those killed in Gaza are women and children, repeating what Tedros said that ‘a child is killed every 10 minutes’ in the coastal territory.
The Israeli regime launched its genocidal campaign on Gaza immediately after the Hamas-led Palestinian resistance surprised Tel Aviv and its Western allies with an unprecedented military operation ‘Al-Aqsa Storm’ (also known as Al-Aqsa Flood) on October 7th.
For the past seven weeks, Israeli warplanes have been indiscriminately pounding the densely populated territory, including hospitals and schools, with the death toll now surpassing 13,000.
More than 5,500 are believed to be children and over 3,500 are women, with 30,000 more people wounded, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the Gaza Strip.
Ismail al-Thawabta, director of the media office in Gaza, said the number of missing persons has risen to 6,000, including 4,000 children and women still trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings.
More children have been killed in Gaza since October 7th than in all conflicts across the world combined in the past three years, according to Save the Children, a charity that works to improve the lives of children across the world.
The charity said a total of 2,985 children were killed in two dozen war zones throughout last year.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell, after she visited Gaza last week, admitted that what she ‘saw and heard’ was ‘devastating’, especially in terms of the crimes against children.
‘Many children are missing and believed buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings and homes, the tragic result of the use of explosive weapons in populated areas,’ she was quoted as saying.
In the occupied West Bank, according to the Defence for Children International
-Palestine (DCIP), Israeli forces have killed 54 Palestinian children in the past seven weeks, including 38 children in October alone, the highest number of Palestinian children killed in a single month in the West Bank since 1967.
As one social media user noted, nowhere is safe for children in Gaza or the occupied West Bank. Not hospitals, not schools and not even the cemeteries.
