By Muhammed Enes Calli
ISTANBUL (AA) – One of the main victims of the ongoing assault on Gaza has been a group that is, by far, the most defenseless and furthest removed from all that is driving Israel’s campaign of death and destruction: children.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), aptly described the Israeli offensive as “a war on children … a war on their childhood and their future.”
His stark warning was echoed by UN chief Antonio Guterres, who said in a General Assembly speech in May: “If there is a hell on earth, it is the lives of children in Gaza.”
These statements are grounded in facts and heartbreaking figures, with tens of thousands of child casualties already documented in Israel’s deadly war.
As of April 2024, there were over 1.06 million – 1,067,986 – children in the Gaza Strip, making up approximately 47% of its total population, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
There were an estimated 544,776 males and 523,210 females under the age of 18, with approximately 15% of them being under the age of five, equivalent to 341,790 minors, the bureau’s data showed.
- Nearly 16,000 children killed
Back in March, Lazzarini shared figures showing that the number of children Israel had killed in Gaza in just over four months was higher than the total number of children killed around the entire world in four years.
At the time, the death toll of children in Gaza stood at over 12,300, exceeding the count of 12,193 killed in global wars between 2019 and 2022, according to UN figures.
A few months prior in December, a World Health Organization official said an average of one Palestinian child was killed every 10 minutes in Gaza, describing the crisis as “humanity’s darkest hour.”
The harrowing statistics have since grown bleaker as Israel continues bombing anything and everything, from hospitals to residential buildings and camps sheltering millions of displaced Palestinians.
As of July 7, which was day 275 of Israel’s war, its forces had killed at least 15,983 Palestinian children in Gaza – an average of 58 every single day since Oct. 7 last year.
The number of children wounded is also above 34,000, according to figures from Gaza’s Health Ministry.
“Children in Gaza have suffered the highest toll in this crisis. We are seeing children killed and maimed at unprecedented numbers. Children are being killed in the most horrific ways possible,” Alexandra Saieh, head of humanitarian policy and advocacy at Save the Children International, told Anadolu.
“They are being dismembered. They have been burnt alive in tents. They have been killed due to crashing apartment building blocks. They have been also killed by preventable diseases and illnesses and denied medical assistance. Children in Gaza are just suffering horrifically.”
- 1,500 children lost limbs or suffered other disabilities
At least 1,500 children in Gaza have lost their limbs or eyes, or suffered other permanent disabilities due to Israeli attacks, according to figures from the Gaza government media office.
In January, UNICEF reported that more than 1,000 Palestinian children had one or both legs amputated since Oct. 7.
That meant more than 10 children losing one or both their legs every single day.
As Israel has also destroyed Gaza’s medical infrastructure and imposed a crippling blockade on humanitarian supplies, several UN agencies and rights groups have reported that children are going through amputations and operations without any anesthetic.
Many distressing videos of these procedures have also come out on social media, showing the world the immense suffering of Gaza’s children.
In many cases, as pointed out by Francesca Albanese, a UN special rapporteur, children in Gaza are just given sedatives to ease their pain as the treatment they require is simply not available.
“This level of horror is unmatched in our lifetime,” she said in a post on X.
Saieh also spoke about the gruesome ways Gazan children have been maimed by Israeli attacks, suffering “life-altering injuries.”
“A child without a leg cannot flee to a so-called safe zone. A child that is so starved that he or she is too weak to cry, can no longer flee,” she said.
- 21,000 children missing, 17,000 orphaned
Save the Children recently reported that up to 21,000 Palestinian children are missing in Gaza, with many trapped beneath rubble, detained by Israeli forces or buried in unmarked graves.
Many more children “are lost, separated from their family members, their loved ones,” Saieh told Anadolu.
“Around 4,000 are presumed to be dead, buried under the rubble of their own homes, and then an unknown number are buried in unmarked graves, and detained or disappeared by Israeli forces in unknown locations,” she said.
According to Gaza’s government media office, at least 3,600 children are missing under the rubble of the thousands of buildings destroyed in Israeli attacks.
As of June 14, the office said at least 200 children had been “kidnapped” by Israeli forces.
As Israel rains down death and destruction on Gaza, organizations like Doctors Without Borders have even coined a new term to identify children without surviving family members: WCNSF – wounded child, no surviving family.
The Gaza media office has identified around 17,000 Palestinian children who have been orphaned, with at least 3% – 510 – having lost both parents.
- Malnutrition: Dozens killed, tens of thousands more at risk
Israel, which is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice, has also been accused by legal experts of using starvation as a weapon of war.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry and a group of UN-backed independent experts, at least 34 people, most of them children, have died of malnutrition in Gaza since last October.
“With the death of these children from starvation … there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza into central and southern Gaza,” the UN-backed experts said in a statement on July 9.
“We declare that Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza.”
Human Rights Watch has also confirmed that children in Gaza are succumbing to “starvation-related complications” as Israel continues to use starvation as a “weapon of war.”
UNRWA warned that more than 50,000 children need urgent treatment for acute malnutrition, while the Gaza media office has said at least 3,500 children are at risk of death due to malnutrition and food shortages.
Additionally, the government media office said at least 82,000 children have shown signs of malnutrition, with 35% of them having severe symptoms.
Another 450,000 children are at risk of developing chest cancer and respiratory diseases as Palestinians are forced to burn various hazardous materials to cook food, it added.
- Over 700,000 children displaced
According to UN figures, up to 1.9 million people are internally displaced in Gaza, many of them forced to move nine or 10 times.
This includes more than 700,000 children who have also been forcibly displaced multiple times, figures from the Gaza government media office show.
Approximately 650,000 children have lost their homes that were destroyed in Israeli attacks, the office said, while at least 625,000 have been out of school for over 10 months now.
Save the Children’s Saieh emphasized that any and all infrastructure essential for children to thrive in the future has been destroyed in Gaza.
“Schools have been destroyed, hospitals have been destroyed, playgrounds have been destroyed, homes have been destroyed,” she said.
“Children in Gaza tell us that they have no hope for the future.”