THE United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said that children in the besieged Gaza Strip live in ‘constant terror due to Israeli bombardment’.
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said the situation for children and families in Gaza is getting ‘worse and worse by the day with the intense heat and families crammed into tents on the sand.’
He emphasised that ‘with ongoing restrictions on aid entry, more than 250 days into the war on Gaza, Gazans are facing extreme difficulties in obtaining food for their children.’
Elder also stated that almost 3,000 malnourished children are at risk of dying before their families’ eyes.
‘There are 3,000 children we were providing with emergency food aid, and now we do not know their whereabouts,’ he added.
Separately, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says more than 50,000 children in the Gaza Strip require immediate medical treatment for acute malnutrition.
In a recent statement the agency warned that ‘with continued restrictions to humanitarian access, people in Gaza continue to face desperate levels of hunger.’
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.
‘UNRWA teams work tirelessly to reach families with aid but the situation is catastrophic,’ the agency said.
Israel’s savage military assault in the Gaza Strip is taking a catastrophic toll on children.
More than 14,000 children have reportedly been killed during the months-long Israeli aggression, according to the latest estimate by the Palestinian Ministry of Health. There are no safe spaces for Palestinians.
More than 37,300 people have been killed.
UNRWA also says at least 17,000 children in Gaza are unaccompanied or separated from their family as Israel continues its brutal war against the besieged enclave.
All of Gaza’s children have been exposed to the traumatic experiences of war, the consequences of which will last a lifetime. Their homes have been destroyed; their families torn apart.
Around 1.7 million people in the Gaza Strip are estimated to have been internally displaced – half of them children. They do not have enough access to water, food, fuel and medicine.
Even during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, Palestinians in Gaza have little relief from the US-Israeli genocide.
Israel has been accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in Rafah city in southern Gaza, where more than one million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6th.
