Palestinian children’s deaths greater than child death toll across all conflicts for 4 years: UN

New York: The head of the UN agency, UNRWA, mandated to help Palestinian refugees has said that more children have been killed in Israel’s war against the Palestinians in Gaza than in four years of conflict around the world. “Staggering.

The number of children reported killed in just over 4 months in #Gaza is higher than the number of children killed in 4 years of wars around the world combined,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on X on Tuesday.

Lazzarini is the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

According to United Nations, some 12,193 children had been killed in conflicts worldwide between 2019 and 2022. The Gaza health ministry said that more than 12,300 children died in the Palestinian territory between last October and the end of February. “This war is a war on children. It is a war on their childhood and their future,” Lazzarini said. At least 31,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been confirmed killed and over 72,000 others injured so far since Oct 7.

For months now, the United Nations and aid groups in the region have been voicing serious concern for either Israel failing to provide safe passage to humanitarian organizations or preventing aid from passing checkpoints and holding up aid along the border.

Meanwhile, the Gaza media office said in a statement on Tuesday that Israel’s military forces have in two weeks killed more than 400 desperate Palestinians who were waiting in lines to receive life-saving aid for their families in northern Gaza. People were waiting for aid trucks at the Kuwait Roundabout in Gaza City on Tuesday morning when the regime’s forces attacked them. At least eleven people were killed. The latest attack on hungry people in Gaza City has resulted in the death of more than 400 people since the “flour massacre.”

 The flour massacre happened in late February, when Israel forces opened fire on Palestinians who were trying to get aid from a food truck along the coastal road on the southwest edge of Gaza City. Over 100 people were killed that day. Northern Gaza has largely been cut off from the rest of the territory since the regime started hostilities in early October.The blockade has driven hundreds of thousands of people to the brink.