Russell said that hundreds of children will die each day if violence returns at the scale and intensity seen before the seven-day pause in fighting that ended on Friday.
“It does not have to be this way – for seven days, there was a glimmer of hope for children amidst this horrific nightmare,” Russell stated in a statement on Friday.
“More than 30 children held hostage in Gaza were safely released and reunited with their families. And the humanitarian pause enabled an increase in the delivery of lifesaving supplies into and across Gaza.”
“Children need a lasting humanitarian ceasefire,” Russell added.
“We call on all parties to ensure that children are protected and assisted, in accordance with their obligations under international humanitarian law. All children in the State of Palestine and Israel deserve peace and hope for a better future.”
UNICEF has also sounded a strong warning about the toll being exacted on children in the Gaza Strip, which has come under a renewed and genocidal Israeli war.
“We cannot see more children with the wounds of war, with the burns, with the shrapnel littering their bodies, with the broken bones,” James Elder, spokesman for the United Nations children’s agency, said on Friday.
“Inaction by those with influence is allowing the killing of children. This is a war on children,” he added.
Israel launched the war against Gaza on October 7 following an operation staged by the territory’s resistance movements. The war killed more than 15,500 people, most of them women and children, across the coastal sliver until last week when an Egyptian- and Qatari-mediated truce took effect. Israel restarted the military campaign earlier on Friday, following the truce, killing nearly 200 more people.
Thousands more are missing and feared buried under rubble.
Speaking earlier this month, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the besieged Palestinian territory was turning into “a graveyard for children.”
“The health system here is overwhelmed,” Elder continued, adding, “I cannot overstate how the capacity has been reduced of hospitals in the last seven weeks.”
“Clearly words, clearly pleas from the world do not make a difference on those who have the power to stop the killing, the maiming of children.”
