Tel Aviv [Israel], February 4: Around 17,000 Palestinian children and young people are living in the Gaza Strip without their parents or siblings, the UN children's aid organization UNICEF has said.
Israel has been bombarding the coastal strip in a bid to root out the Palestinian group Hamas, which governs Gaza and launched coordinated attacks on Israel on October 7, in which more than 1,200 people were killed.
The number of people killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of Israel's response to the attacks has now risen to 27,131, the Gaza health authority said on Friday.
The majority of the dead are women, children or young people, a statement added, while 66,287 Palestinians have been injured.
The figures cannot be independently verified but the United Nations and other observers point out that the authority's figures have proven to be credible in the past.
Children's parents in Gaza have either been killed, injured or have had to move elsewhere, UNICEF spokesman for the region Jonathan Crickx told reporters in Geneva via a video link from Jerusalem.
"Palestinian children's mental health is severely impacted, they present symptoms like extremely high levels of persistent anxiety, loss of appetite, cannot sleep, they have emotional outbursts or they panic every time they hear a bombing," he said.
"These children don't have anything to do with this conflict. Yet they are suffering like no child should ever suffer. Not a single child whatever the religion, nationality, language or race, no child should ever be exposed to the level of violence seen on October 7 or to the level of violence that we have witnessed since then," he said.
Two related children, six and four, both lost practically their entire families at the beginning of December, Crickx said, adding that the four-year-old is in complete shock.
Normally in conflict situations, the extended family often looks after small children but this is difficult in the Gaza Strip because many have been displaced and are barely able to support their own children due to a lack of water and food, he added
Source: Qatar Tribune