Unicef said children are paying the highest price in Israel’s assault, with one child killed or injured every 20 minutes on average.
“Grave violations. Blocked aid. Starvation. Homes, schools, hospitals – destroyed. This is the destruction of childhood. Of life itself. These are children. Not numbers. No child should live through this. Not one more,” added Unicef.
The Gaza Strip is “the hungriest place on Earth”, according to the United Nations, which has warned that the Palestinian territory’s entire population is at risk of famine.
Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the territory was “the only defined area – a country or defined territory within a country – where you have the entire population at risk of famine. One hundred per cent of the population at risk of famine,” he said on Friday.
“Gaza is the hungriest place on Earth.”
Laerke detailed the difficulties faced by the UN in delivering humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Nine hundred trucks of humanitarian aid had been authorised by Israel to enter the strip since the blockade was partially lifted, but so far only 600 had been off-loaded on the Gaza side of the border, and a smaller number of shipments had then been picked up for distribution within the territory because of security considerations, he said.
Laerke said the mission to deliver aid was “in an operational straitjacket that makes it one of the most obstructed aid operations not only in the world today, but in recent history”.
Once truckloads entered Gaza, they were often “swarmed by desperate people”, he added.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza in response to the devastating Hamas attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 hostages taken into Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. The campaign has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, Gaza health officials say, and left the territory in ruins.
