The Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), on Tuesday, announced that the number of children killed due to the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip exceeds the total number of children killed over four years of conflicts worldwide.
Philippe Lazzarini wrote on the X platform, “It’s astonishing. The number of children accounted for killed in just four months in Gaza surpasses the number of children killed over four years in all conflicts around the world,” condemning what he referred to as a “war on children.”
Lazzarini based his post on United Nations figures showing that 12,193 children were killed in conflicts around the world between 2019 and 2022. This comparison is made with reports from the Gaza Health Ministry, stating that Israel has killed over 12,300 children in this part of the Palestinian territories between last October and the end of February.
Lazzarini stated, “This war is a war on children. It is a war on their childhood and their future.”
The war erupted following an unprecedented attack by “Hamas” on southern Israel on October 7, resulting in over 1,160 deaths. According to figures from the Hamas-affiliated Health Ministry, the war’s toll in Gaza has risen to over 31,184 victims, with 72,889 injured, “72% of them children and women.”
Last week, the World Health Organization warned that children are dying of starvation in two hospitals in northern Gaza visited by its mission at the weekend, noting a severe shortage of food, fuel, and medicine.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, said that the agency’s visits to Al Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals “were the first since October 2023 despite our efforts to access northern Gaza more regularly.”
Tedros described the situation as “grim” in a post on the X platform, highlighting that “the situation in (Al Awda Hospital) is appalling given the destruction of one of the buildings.”
He stated that Kamal Adwan Hospital, the only one with a pediatric department in northern Gaza, is overwhelmed with patients. “The shortage of food has led to the death of 10 children,” he added.
In total, the Gaza Health Ministry reported at least 16 children’s deaths from malnutrition in northern Gaza, cut off from aid supplies. In addition to the acute food shortage in the hospitals, Tedros warned on X that power outages “pose a serious risk to patient care, especially in sensitive departments such as intensive care and neonatal units.”
He emphasized that “civilians, especially children and medical teams, need immediate enhanced aid,” stressing that “the essential medicine for all these patients is peace. It is a ceasefire.”
The United Nations has warned that famine in Gaza has become “almost inevitable” due to the war waged by Israel on the blockaded sector since October 7.
