Jorge Fuentelsaz
JERUSALEM, Nov 6 (NNN-EFE) – A Palestinian child dies every ten minutes and two are injured in the Gaza Strip, since the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas on Oct 7, a situation that has turned Gaza into a “graveyard for thousands of children,” according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
“Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children. It’s a living hell for everyone else,” said UNICEF’s spokesman, James Elder, yesterday, who stressed that the number of dead children, “”staggeringly rises every day.”
The images of the bodies of injured children and minors, captured by cell phones or local journalists and circulated on social networks, are devastating.
“One child is killed every 10 minutes in Gaza right now. Time is costing lives. We are calling for an immediate ceasefire. There is no safe place in Gaza,” the NGO, Save the Children wrote on X (formerly Twitter) to highlight the statistics.
The Gaza Ministry of Health said yesterday that, at least 4,000 children have died, 8,067 have been injured and 1,250 are missing under rubble of buildings, destroyed by the ongoing attacks by the Israeli Defence Forces.
On Oct 17, Save the Children stated on its website that, “according to the latest available data, more than 1,000 children have died in 11 days of air strikes in the Gaza Strip, which is equivalent to one every 15 minutes.”
Statistics from a few weeks later are a clear indication that the offensive against minors is getting harsher, and as UNICEF explained, not only because of the bombings, but also because of trauma and the current lack of drinking water in the Strip.
“The situation is clearly not improving. Around 420 children die or are injured every day, which is obviously a terrible number,” Toby Fricker, also from UNICEF, told Efe.
He asserted that there are many casualty figures circulating, “but the reality is that, too many children are dying or injured every day, which is why UNICEF and the UN Secretary General have called many, many times for an immediate ceasefire, and we will continue to do so.”
“Right now, there is no safe place for children in Gaza,” Fricker said, recalling that about half of Gaza’s residents are children, meaning that there are nearly one million minors living in Gaza.
“Now, that many have been displaced, (the children) are living in shelters in schools and other places. There is a lack of access to basic services, such as drinking water, health care or sanitation,” he adds, before stressing that Gaza suffered from “great humanitarian needs, even before the outbreak of the current war.”
On Saturday, UNICEF condemned attacks on two schools in the last 24 hours that killed at least 35 people, including children, and according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 73% of the victims were minors, children and elderly.
In a statement released yesterday, the ministry also announced that more than 200,000 homes, more than half of Gaza, have been destroyed.
Also yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, insisted that the army is “operating in accordance with the highest standards of international law to avoid harming innocent people.”
He said this, after disavowing the Minister of Heritage, the far-right Amichai Eliyahu, who had assured that, launching an atomic bomb against the Gaza Strip could be one of the options in the war.– NNN-EFE
