Gaza: Children under attack (original) (raw)

Eight-year-old Shaimaa was playing cards with friends in her home in Gaza city when a neighbour’s house was shelled. Shaimaa’s injuries were so severe, her right hand and foot were amputated. She said: “I want to become a journalist to tell the world about the attacks against children in Gaza. Before the war, I managed our school radio station. My friends encouraged me.” ©UNICEF/Abed Zaqout

"The nightmare in Gaza is more than a humanitarian crisis, it is a crisis of humanity."

– United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres

The images and stories below are unbearable. But they must be seen and shared. The world needs to know what the people of Gaza are enduring, and political leaders must bring this war to an end.

"I have never in my humanitarian career seen this level of suffering, desperation and deprivation,” said Gemma Connell, OCHA team leader in Gaza.

Doctors Without Borders reports: “Hospitals are flooded with patients, amputations and surgeries are being carried out without proper anaesthesia, and morgues are flooded with dead bodies.”

Entire families are being killed in aerial bombardments, and children are paying the heaviest price. UNICEF Spokesperson James Elder calls it “a war on children.” He explained: “Most crises impact children terribly, they have a casualty rate of children around 20 per cent. But in Gaza, that rate is 40 per cent."

“This is twice as lethal to children as conflicts we’ve seen in the last 20 years,” he added.

To account for the number of injured and maimed children who have no known surviving family member, doctors in Gaza have been forced to coin a new and heartbreaking acronym: WCNSF – wounded child, no surviving family.

Since 7 October, nearly 1.9 million people – about 85 per cent of Gaza’s population – have been displaced across the Strip. The vast majority of the 24,000 killed and 59,000 injured* are women and children. Nowhere and no one in Gaza is safe.

Dr. Margaret Harris, Spokesperson for the World Health Organization, described the situation in Gaza hospitals as “unconscionable.” She explained: “The very basics, they do not have them. One of my colleagues described people lying on the floor in severe pain, in agony, but they weren’t asking for pain relief. They were asking for water.

It’s beyond belief that the world is allowing this to continue.”

“The impact of seeing children in that much pain and not having the equipment, medicines to treat them or alleviate pain is too much, even for experienced professionals. Even in a war zone, the sights and sounds of a young child mutilated by bomb cannot be reconciled, let alone understood, within the bounds of humanity.”

– Jason Lee, Save the Children’s Country Director for the Occupied Palestinian Territory

*As per estimated tolls published by the Palestinian authorities.

Everyone in Gaza is hungry and each day is a desperate search for sustenance, said the World Food Programme (WFP).

“The flow of aid has been a trickle in comparison to a sea of humanitarian needs,”

explains Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner General for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. “Humanitarian aid will not be enough to reverse the worsening hunger among the population. Commercial supplies are a must to allow the markets and private sector to reopen and provide an alternative to food accessibility.”

“The humanitarian community has been left with the impossible mission of supporting more than 2 million people [in Gaza], even as its own staff are being killed and displaced, as communication blackouts continue, as roads are damaged and convoys are shot at, and as commercial supplies vital to survival are almost non-existent,” said Martin Griffiths, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, when addressing the UN Security Council on 5 January.

He continued:

“People [in Gaza] are witnessing daily threats to their very existence while the world watches on.”

#Please don’t just watch on.

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