The Gaza Strip has become a graveyard for thousands of children, the United Nations said Tuesday, as it feared the prospect of more dying of dehydration.
Israel has heavily bombarded Gaza since Hamas gunmen stormed across the border on October 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping at least 240 others, according to Israeli officials.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said the strikes have killed more than 8,500 people, mainly civilians.
The UN children’s agency UNICEF said there was a risk that the number of child deaths directly from bombardment could become eclipsed.
“Our gravest fears about the reported numbers of children killed becoming dozens, then hundreds, and ultimately thousands were realised in just a fortnight,” UNICEF spokesman James Elder said in a statement.
“The numbers are appalling; reportedly more than 3,450 children killed; staggeringly this rises significantly every day.”
“Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children. It’s a living hell for everyone else.”
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He said the more than one million children living in the Gaza Strip were also suffering from a lack of clean water.
“Just 5% of Gaza’s average daily output can be produced using water. Dehydration-related mortality in children, especially in newborns, is becoming more common, he stated.
In order to allow safe, continuous, and unhindered access to humanitarian aid, including fuel, food, water, and medical supplies, UNICEF is urging an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the opening of all borders into Gaza.
“And if there isn’t a cease-fire, medicine, water, or the release of the kidnapped children? Then we speed towards even worse atrocities against defenseless infants,” the Elder remarked.
Through a video hookup, Elder said to reporters in Geneva that “there are definitely children who are dying who have been impacted by the bombardment but should have had their lives saved.”
He declared that “the deaths from the attacks, they could absolutely be the tip of the iceberg” in the absence of increased humanitarian access into the Gaza Strip.
Elder stated that approximately 940 children were reported missing from Gaza Strip health institutes, which are governed by Hamas.
The spokesperson for a UN humanitarian organization, Jens Laerke, continued, saying, “It’s almost unbearable to think about children buried under rubble, but (with) very little opportunity or possibility for getting them out.”
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According to the World Health Organisation, indirect bombing was not the only cause of death in Gaza.
According to WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier, “We have 130 premature infants that are dependent on incubators, of which 61 percent are in the north.”
“With the widespread relocation, the overcrowding, and the damage to water and sanitation infrastructure, there is an impending public health catastrophe.”
