UNITED NATIONS — Children in Gaza are suffering from “horrific conditions” and the war-ravaged territory remains the most dangerous place in the world to be a child, the deputy chief of the U.N. children’s agency says.
Ted Chaiban said at the end of a three-day visit to Gaza on Thursday that since his last visit two months ago “the situation has gone from catastrophe to near collapse.”
If the staggering decline in conditions persists, “we could see deaths due to indiscriminate conflict compounded by deaths due to disease and hunger,” the UNICEF deputy executive director said in a statement.
Chaiban said he met an 11-year-old girl named Sama on Tuesday at al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. She was skipping with friends when shrapnel from a bombing pierced her abdomen, leading to the loss of her spleen. Now, he said, her immune system is compromised “in a war zone full of disease and infection.”
Ten minutes later, he said, he met 13-year-old Ibrahim who had been in a shelter in a designated safe area when everything collapsed. His badly damaged hand went untreated, became gangrenous, and his arm had to be amputated.
“A matter of hours after we left, many families fled al-Nasser hospital, as fighting closed in on the area,” Chaiban said.
The “war on children” must stop, he said, pointing to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that nearly 25,000 people have been killed since Oct. 7. Up to 70% of those victims, according to the militant group’s health service, have been women and children.
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