{"id":15775,"date":"2023-12-19T23:47:19","date_gmt":"2023-12-19T18:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/?p=15775"},"modified":"2023-12-19T23:47:19","modified_gmt":"2023-12-19T18:47:19","slug":"gaza-most-dangerous-place-in-the-world-to-be-a-child-unicef","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/2023\/12\/19\/gaza-most-dangerous-place-in-the-world-to-be-a-child-unicef\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaza \u2018most dangerous place in the world to be a child\u2019: UNICEF"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gaza \u2018most dangerous place in the world to be a child\u2019: UNICEF <\/strong><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

UNITED NATIONS:<\/p>\n

Gaza, which continues to be under deadly Israeli attacks, is by far the most dangerous place in the world to be a child and deaths of youngsters from disease will likely surpass those from bombardment in the absence of a ceasefire, the UN Children\u2019s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cA lack of food, water, shelter and sanitation continues to put children\u2019s lives at risk as they suffer under relentless airstrikes with no safe place to go,\u201d said UNICEF Spokesperson James Elder, who recently returned from the besieged enclave.<\/p>\n

Ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on a pause in fighting to facilitate aid access, he told reporters in Geneva: \u201cEvery single child is enduring these 10 weeks of hell and not one of them can escape.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cAs a parent of a critically sick child told me, \u2018Our situation is pure misery\u2026I don\u2019t know if we will make it through this\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

According to the Gaza health authorities, over 19,400 Palestinians have been killed in the enclave since October 7 when the hostilities between Israel and Hamas erupted.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Over 52,000 Palestinians have been injured and their access to life-saving care is extremely limited. UN health agency WHO said on Tuesday that only eight of the 36 hospitals in the Strip were at least partially functional.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hospitals were overwhelmed with children and their parents, all bearing \u201cthe ghastly wounds of war\u201d, Elder said. He stressed that while in the Strip he encountered many young amputees. Around 1,000 children in Gaza had lost one or both their legs, he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From the UN World Health Organization (WHO), spokesperson Dr Margaret Harris added that WHO staff in Gaza spoke of not even being able to walk in the emergency wards \u201cfor fear of stepping on people\u201d lying on the floor \u201cin severe pain\u201d and asking for food and water.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She called the situation \u201cunconscionable\u201d and said that it \u201cis beyond belief that the world is allowing this to continue\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Over the past 48 hours, the largest remaining hospital in Gaza, Al Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in the south, was shelled twice, Elder said. That hospital \u201cnot only shelters large numbers of children who had already been badly injured in attacks on their homes, but hundreds of women and children seeking safety\u201d, he stressed, referring to those who have had to flee because of the hostilities and evacuation orders.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Some 1.9 million people, or the vast majority of the enclave\u2019s population, are estimated to be displaced in Gaza.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Injured children dealing with the loss of loved ones had been forced to move again and again, Mr Elder said. \u201cWhere do children and their families go? They are not safe in hospitals. They are not safe in shelters. And they are certainly not safe in the so-called \u2018safe\u2019 zones,\u201d he insisted.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The UNICEF spokesperson said that the \u201csafe zones\u201d were \u201canything but safe\u201d because they had been designated unilaterally by Israel alone and lacked \u201csufficient resources for survival\u201d: food, water, medicine, protection.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Elder described the zones as \u201ctiny patches of barren land, or street corners, or half-built buildings, with no water, no facilities, no shelter from the cold and the rain and no sanitation\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cUnder the current besieged conditions, adequate supplies for such zones are impossible,\u201d he said, adding that during his recent stay in Gaza he had experienced that reality first-hand.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The UNICEF spokesperson highlighted the dire lack of adequate sanitation, pointing out that in Gaza there was one toilet for 700 people on average. Diarrhoea cases in children were above 100,000 and combined with soaring malnutrition could prove increasingly deadly, he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Elder added that more than 130,000 of children under two were not receiving \u201ccritical life-saving breastfeeding and age-appropriate complementary feeding\u201d such as micronutrient supplementation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The delivery of aid was a \u201cmatter of life or death\u201d for children in Gaza, and the conditions to provide that aid \u201care not being met\u201d, Elder said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The number of aid trucks allowed into Gaza remains \u201cwell below the daily average of 500 truckloads\u201d that entered every working day prior to October 7, according to the UN humanitarian affairs coordination office, OCHA.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On Sunday, OCHA said that 102 trucks carrying humanitarian supplies and four tankers of fuel entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing from Egypt and 79 trucks entered through the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel, for the first time since the start of the escalation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

WHO\u2019s Dr Harris stressed that beyond bringing in supplies across the border into the enclave, it was a challenge to get aid to where it\u2019s needed, because of the ongoing hostilities but also the massive damage to roads.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cAn immediate and long-lasting humanitarian ceasefire is the only way to end the killing and injuring of children, and child deaths from disease, and enable the urgent delivery of desperately needed life-saving aid,\u201d Elder said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: APP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gaza \u2018most dangerous place in the world to be a child\u2019: UNICEF   UNITED NATIONS: Gaza, which continues to be under deadly Israeli attacks, is by far the most dangerous place in the world to be a child and deaths of youngsters from disease will likely surpass those from bombardment in the absence of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":14668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2805,2297,2299],"tags":[3237,2740],"class_list":["post-15775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-rights","category-latest-news","category-world","tag-gaza","tag-unicef"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15775"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15777,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15775\/revisions\/15777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newspulse.com.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}