The Gaza Strip has become a “graveyard for thousands of children,” the United Nations said on Tuesday, raising fears more could die of dehydration.
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“Our deepest fears that the number of children killed would rise to dozens, then hundreds, and finally thousands within two weeks came true,” James Elder, a spokesman for UNICEF, said in a news release.
“The figures are shocking: it is estimated that more than 3,450 children have been killed and it is shocking that this number is increasing every day,” he said. “Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children.”
More than a million children living in the Gaza Strip also suffer from a lack of drinking water, he said.
“Gaza’s water production capacity is only 5% of its usual daily production. The death of children – especially infants – due to dehydration is a growing threat.
Unicef is calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the opening of all border crossings into Gaza to allow safe access for humanitarian aid.
“If there is no ceasefire, no water, no medicine and no release of the abducted children, we face even greater horrors for these innocent children,” Ms. Elder said.
“It is unbearable to think of these children buried under the rubble with little chance of getting out,” said Jens Laerke, spokesman for the United Nations humanitarian agency.
However, according to the World Health Organization, Gazans are not only dying from direct bombings.
“We have 130 premature babies who rely on incubators, about 61% of them in the north,” said Christian Lindmeier, a WHO spokesman. “There is a looming public health catastrophe.”
Israel has been heavily bombing the Gaza Strip since the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas’s unprecedented attack on October 7, which Israeli officials said killed 1,400 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapped at least 240 others.
The health ministry in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip said the attacks killed more than 8,500 people, mostly civilians.