UN humanitarians reports ‘Double-digit’ number of children killed overnight

GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 27th March. UN humanitarians on Tuesday said intense hostilities in Gaza continued between Hamas fighters and Israeli forces with a “double-digit number of children killed overnight” and ongoing aid delivery obstacles that are responsible for near-famine conditions

Despite an immediate ceasefire call during Ramadan from the Security Council the violence is still going on prompting urgent appeals from UN aid agencies for the resolution to be respected immediately, to prevent more people dying.

UNICEF Spokesperson James Elder said that 13,750 children have now been killed according to Gaza’s health authorities, after Israeli airstrikes and bombardment launched in response to Hamas-led terror attacks on Israel on 7 October.

He cited reports of “a double-digit number of children killed overnight”, Mr. Elder noted that this had happened only hours after the Security Council resolution was passed”.

Elder added that Khan Younis “barely exists anymore” before described the “utter annihilation” of constant Israeli bombardment which has left an unreported number of children and families buried under the rubble of their homes.

“In my 20 years with the UN I have never seen such devastation, it’s just chaos, ruin, debris and rubble every single direction, everywhere I look,” he said during his latest aid mission to the north.

He noted that Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis “such a critical place for children with the wounds of war” – is now no longer even operational, added that only one-third of Gaza’s hospitals are “partially functional” now.

Mr. Elder described seeing people making “that universal signal of hand to mouth, desperately asking and seeking for food”.

WFP aid mission secured the passage of 96 trucks carrying relief supplies on Monday in five days

UN agencies have pointed out that this is despite the fact that hundreds of trucks containing lifesaving humanitarian aid remain over the border in Egypt.

Mr. Elder cited food insecurity analysis published warned of Gaza’s “catastrophic decline into imminent famine.

He noted that the agency’s own data indicated that 1 in 3 children under two years old now suffer from acute malnutrition. Before the conflict, fewer than one in 100 children under five were malnourished, Mr. Elder said.

“This speaks to utter deprivation, this speaks to the devastation of things children rely on water and health systems but it also speaks to what the numbers speak to which is a lethal lack of food and nutrition aid still not getting to the north.”

WHO spokesperson Tarik Jazarevic reported that most patients at Al Amal hospital in the south have now left the facility.

Media reports indicated that an evacuation order for the facility was issued by the Israeli military, amid intense hostilities in the west of Khan Younis. The situation is also believed to be dire in northern Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital which was also the target of an Israeli military raid, but WHO does not have access there, Mr. Jasarevic said.

“You have health workers dying, you have hospitals that are under siege, you have people who are looking for shelter in these places and if you can’t get a shelter at a hospital where else can you go?” he told journalists in Geneva.

Media reports indicated airstrikes overnight into Tuesday near the southernmost city of Rafah where some 1.5 million people now shelter, many after being uprooted from their homes elsewhere in the enclave.

UN aid coordination urged Israel to lift its ban on aid deliveries to the north by UNRWA echoed calls by the UN Secretary-General.

“We need to dispel this notion that their obligation of getting aid in somehow stops with getting a few trucks a fraction of what is needed across the border and then once it’s in there as I have seen reported, then it’s not our problem anymore, it’s the UN humanitarian agencies’ problem. That is not correct.”

He added: “You cannot claim to adhere to these international provisions of law when you block UNRWA food convoys, when you just last week denied five missions to the north, when we have now reports of Israeli attacks on warehouses and the police that are supposed to help secure this aid inside Gaza.”