According to UN estimates released on Tuesday, more children have been killed by Israeli troops in Gaza since October than in all global conflicts from 2019 to 2022 combined.
Since then, almost 12,300 children have been recorded murdered in the Palestinian enclave, according to UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) chief Philippe Lazzarini, who cited UN and Gaza’s health ministry data. Children account for about half of the entire death toll, which has surpassed 31,000.
According to the estimates, 12,193 children were killed in all armed conflicts around the world between January 2019 and December 2022.
This war is a war on children. It is a war on their childhood and their future,” Lazzarini said, calling for an immediate ceasefire “for the sake of children in Gaza.”
Israel declared war on Hamas on October 7, after the Palestinian militants killed more than 1,100 people and took around 250 hostages in a surprise attack on the Jewish state. Israel responded with a relentless air campaign, before sending troops and armor into Gaza later that month. Within a month, more civilians had died there than in almost two years of fighting in Ukraine, according to UN data from both conflicts.
Over the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he will resist US pressure and attack the city of Rafah in the south of the enclave, where more than a million Gazans displaced from the north have sought refuge. The United Nations has warned that an Israeli assault on Rafah “could lead to a slaughter” of civilians.
Despite the rising death toll, Netanyahu stated on Tuesday that the Israeli military had “taken measures to minimise civilian casualties that no other army has taken in history.”
An Israeli aircraft struck a UNRWA relief distribution centre in Rafah later Tuesday night, the agency stated on Wednesday. With a quarter of Gaza’s people at risk of starvation, the territory’s health ministry reports the deaths.
