Gaza/New York – At least 74 children were killed in the Gaza Strip in the first week of this year, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a statement today. Some children also died in the so-called humanitarian zone in the Mavásí area. More than a million children in the Gaza Strip are surviving in tent camps, with eight newborns and infants dying of hypothermia there since December 26, according to UNICEF.
“The new year has brought more death and suffering for children in Gaza from attacks, deprivation and cold,” said the organisation’s executive director Catherine Russell, adding that the ceasefire was long overdue.
Israel’s 15-month-old war against the Palestinian terrorist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip has displaced about 1.9 million residents, roughly 90 percent of the population, according to UN figures; many people live in makeshift tent camps where they are exposed to cold weather among other things. Especially small children are not able to regulate their body temperature in these conditions.
Israeli strikes on the territory of the Gaza Strip, according to the Israeli army, target fighters and infrastructure used by the Hamas movement, but civilians, including children, are regularly among the victims. Israel has repeatedly attacked in the so-called Mavasi humanitarian zone in the south of the Gaza Strip. Humanitarian zones are areas designated by Israel as safe to which residents from the Gaza Strip’s combat zones are supposed to retreat, according to the Israeli military.
The current war in the Gaza Strip began after fighters from Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023. In the process, they killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took another 250 or so hostages to a narrow coastal strip.
Since the beginning of the war, at least 45,936 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip, and another 109,274 have been injured, according to today’s current data from the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, which is administered by the Hamas movement. The data does not distinguish between militants and civilians.
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Source: www.ceskenoviny.cz
