Heartbreaking Scenes: UNICEF Director – No Safe Place for Children in Gaza
As Israel continues relentless shelling on the Gaza Strip for the second consecutive month, the Executive Director of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), Catherine Russell, revealed that there is no safe place for the million children in Gaza, describing what she witnessed and heard in Gaza as heartbreaking.
Russell said in a press statement that grave violations against children include killing, maiming, attacks on schools and hospitals, and the prevention of humanitarian aid access. The UN official also emphasized that the intermittent opening of Gaza’s border crossings for humanitarian supplies is insufficient to meet the massive, increasing needs, calling for ensuring the protection and support of children in accordance with international humanitarian law.
Last Friday, UNICEF stated that the lives of a million children in Gaza are now “hanging by a thread,” with the collapse of health services for children in almost all parts of the territory. The organization mentioned in a statement that “the near-total collapse and attacks on medical services, particularly in the northern areas of Gaza, threaten the lives of all children in the region.”
The statement also pointed out that more than 1.5 million displaced, including 700,000 children, are now struggling to obtain safe water and living under “horrific” sanitary conditions.
Meanwhile, children in the Jordanian capital, under the sponsorship of professional unions, organized a solidarity march with their peers in the Gaza Strip, raising slogans calling for the protection of childhood and avoiding the woes of war and destruction.
The ongoing Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip since October 7th have resulted in the deaths of 11,320 people, including 4,650 children and 3,145 women, in a provisional toll.
