what to know
- UNICEF says 67 children have died during the ceasefire.
- There have been 280 Palestinian deaths and 672 injuries reported since the pause began.
- Families face extreme food shortages despite some market activity.
- Gaza’s health system is collapsing, leaving children without care.
- Some 4,000 children need urgent medical evacuation.
In an update, Pires told reporters: “There is only one party to the conflict in Gaza with the firepower to carry out airstrikes.”
Since October 11, the first full day of the pause in hostilities between the Israeli army and Hamas fighters, at least 67 children have died in “conflict-related incidents,” the UNICEF spokesperson said.
His comments came as the NGO Doctors Without Borders reported that a nine-year-old girl is being treated for facial injuries after shooting from quadcopter drones was reported on Wednesday.
Hundreds dead and injured
According to UNICEF, at least 67 children have died in “conflict-related incidents” since the pause in hostilities between Hamas and Israel was announced on October 10, in at a rate of two per day.
Veteran UN aid worker Dr. Rik Peeperkorn of the World Health Organization (WHO) echoed those concerns, adding that “even though there is a ceasefire, people are still dying.”
The latest data from the Gaza Ministry of Health indicates that 280 Gazans have been killed and 672 injured since the ceasefirein addition to 571 bodies recovered from the rubble.
Adding to the current insecurity, UN aid teams, including the World Food Program (WFP), continue to push for greater access to Gazans, including hundreds of thousands of displaced and extremely vulnerable families.
Incoming trucks take a step in the right direction
The agency is now sending approximately 100 trucks a day to the enclave loaded with relief supplies, representing almost two-thirds of its daily target amount – “a step in the right direction” – said Abeer Etefa, WFP’s chief spokesperson for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe.
He noted that although deliveries from the commercial sector are also crossing into Gaza, the main problem for UN and non-UN actors “is the fact that many of these food supplies remain at the border points for long days and therefore the possibility of spoilage is known to be high.”
From inside Gaza, WFP’s Head of Communications in Palestine, Martin Penner, described the dire situation facing the exhausted people of the enclave, after more than two years of war.
“One woman told us that she feels like her whole body is crying out for different foods, different from the canned and dry rations that people have been living on for two years,” she said.
Prices ‘out of reach’
Markets are also returning to Gaza stocked with food, “but prices are still out of reach for most people,” Penner insisted. “A chicken costs $25, a kilo of meat costs $20. Many people still depend on food aid, food packages and bread from bakeries.”
One mother told her that she didn’t take her children to the market “so they wouldn’t see all the food available… If they go near the market, she tells them to cover their eyes.
Another woman from the same town said she buys an apple and divides it among her four children.”
Meanwhile, healthcare delivery in the Gaza Strip remains devastating and inadequate to treat trauma victims and those requiring specialized care.
“Doctors in Gaza tell us about children they know how to save but can’t,” said UNICEF’s Mr. Pires, who reeled off a list of young people “with severe burns, shrapnel wounds, spinal injuries, traumatic brain injuries, children with cancer who have missed months of treatment. Premature babies who need intensive care. Children who need surgeries that simply cannot be done inside Gaza today.”
Around 4,000 children are still waiting to be evacuated, including two-year-old Omyma, “whose heart is failing due to a congenital problem that doctors in Gaza cannot treat. He needs urgent surgery to save his life.”said Mr. Pires.