The Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Catherine Russell, announced that more than 13,800 children have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war between Hamas and Israel on October 7.
During a press conference in New York on Wednesday, according to a statement by her organization, Russell said,“Thousands have been infected, and there are thousands on the brink of starvation.”
Russell, who made a two-day visit to the Middle East, urged the parties to the conflict “to release all Israeli hostages, implement an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, facilitate unrestricted humanitarian access, and refrain from any further acts of violence against children.”
In a separate statement, UN Women, which is concerned with gender equality and the empowerment of women, said that “one child is injured or dies every 10 minutes” in Gaza.
UNICEF spokeswoman Tess Ingram, who recently visited Gaza, said during a press conference in Geneva on Tuesday that what astonished her was “the number of wounded children she saw.”
“Not just in hospitals, but on the streets, in their temporary shelters, where they live their permanently changed lives,” she added.
