The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said on Wednesday that children in Gaza are suffering devastating consequences as a result of the Israeli occupation’s continued closure of the Strip’s crossings to the entry of aid and commercial supplies for the sixth week.
UNRWA added in a post on the X platform, accompanied by a photo of two children helping to pull a cart loaded with several containers filled with water.
Since March 2, the Israeli occupation authorities, the occupying power, have been preventing the entry of essential supplies, including food, water, and nutrition, into the Gaza Strip.
They closed the crossings and violated the ceasefire agreement by refusing to pay the second phase of aid. This has caused a humanitarian catastrophe and exacerbated famine and thirst.
UNRWA said: “In northern Gaza, children are not looking for their toys or pens, but for water. They are not going to school, and they are pushing carts in search of something to quench their thirst.”
It explained that the occupation authorities have imposed a blockade and prevented the entry of aid and commercial supplies into Gaza for the sixth week, leading to “an increasing scarcity of clean water, food, shelter, and medical care.”
UNRWA stressed that the continued Israeli blockade has had a “devastating” impact on Gaza’s children, calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
The water crisis in the Gaza Strip is worsening due to the interruption of water supplies from the Israeli company Mekorot to Gaza City, which represents 70% of the total available supply.
Since the resumption of the genocide in Gaza on March 18, more than 1,500 Palestinians have been killed and 3,688 others injured, most of them children and women, according to the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel, the occupying power, has committed genocidal crimes in the Gaza Strip, leaving more than 166,000 dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing.
