UNICEF: War and disease threaten more than 1.1 million children in Gaza

According to the international group Tasnim News Agency, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) yesterday Referring to the disastrous situation of the people of Gaza in the shadow of the continued aggression of the occupying regime, he announced that the continuation of attacks against Gaza will aggravate malnutrition and acute diseases among more than 1.1 million children and create a deadly cycle.

Catherine Russell, the executive director of UNICEF, said in this regard, the children of Gaza are caught in a nightmare that is getting worse every day. Children and their families in the Gaza Strip continue to be massacred and injured as a result of the war, and their lives are increasingly at risk due to chronic diseases and a severe lack of water and food. He urged all children and civilians against violence.

UNICEF also announced in a report that due to the severe lack of water and healthy food, the number of cases of digestive diseases among children has increased significantly. ; So that the cases of diarrhea among children under the age of five increased from 48,000 to 71,000 in one week, and since December 17, 3,200 children have contracted this disease every day.

According to this report, the increase The remarkable number of cases of diarrhea and digestive diseases among children in this short period of time shows that the health of children in the Gaza Strip is in terrible danger, and the cases of diarrhea among children under five years of age have increased by 2,000 percent during this period.

UNICEF also warned about the risk of food security in Gaza and announced that many children do not receive their basic food needs. According to a survey on December 26, about 90 percent of children under the age of 2 cannot get the food they need. They receive milk and there is severe food poverty in Gaza. Also, pregnant women cannot access enough food and have to consume only 2 types of food, bread or milk. The United Nations Children’s Fund expressed concern about acute malnutrition among children in Gaza. The situation in this region is beyond famine, and 155,000 pregnant women and nursing mothers and more than 135,000 children under the age of 2 are at risk of acute malnutrition, creating a deadly cycle.

UNICEF announced that 2023 was the bloodiest year for Palestinian children and violence against Palestinian children has reached an unprecedented level. Gaza is the most dangerous place for children on the planet. The massacre of this number of children in Israel’s aggression against Gaza shows how these children are targeted in a discriminatory way (compared to other children in the world). It is very unfortunate that the thousands of children who are massacred every day in Gaza have become mere numbers and statistics. We call Israel’s war against Gaza a war against children.

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