UNICEF, 400 thousand children in Gaza are facing "very grim" future

Head of UNICEF’S field office in the Gaza Strip, Pernille Ironside said Tuesday that 400 children were killed in the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and nearly 400 thousand were traumatised and face “very grim” future.

Ironside told a press briefing through telephone that rebuilding the children lives will be part of a much larger effort to rebuild the sector once the fighting stops permanently.

She said, “How do we expect parents and those who care for children to takes care of them and raise them positively when they themselves are not able to live as human beings? There are people who lost all their family members in one a blow” adding “How could a society deal with this?”.

Until August, 4 it was reported that 408 children (251 boys and 157 girls) were killed who represented 31 percent of the total number of civilians killed during the aggression. According to estimates, 70 percent of the children were 12 years old less.

The children of Gaza suffered under the Israeli siege imposed on the enclave without proper schooling due to lack of schools while a majority of them were forced to enter the labour market at an early age which is already burdened with 59 percent unemployment rate.

Ironside said, “If you were seven years old, you would have lived two previous wars and the latest escalation is worse than the 2008-2009 and 2012 aggression” stressing that “it is unusual to live in this situation and stay alive while you see destructive weapons being used in an unreasonable way to amputate limbs and horribly distort and tear people apart in front of children and parents eyes”.

UNICEF estimates that nearly 373 thousand children suffer from traumatic experience and need direct psychological and social support.

Ironeside said “the efforts needed to help these children are a very huge task for the teams that have already arrived on the ground. But of course we are committed to doing our work no matter how long it takes”.

Ironside pointed out that the devastation brought by Israel to the electric power has worsened the water crisis and stopped the water pumping facilities from working.

She said “There is a very limited amount of water available and it is used for drinking which means that there is no enough water for sanitary purposes. We see children who come from shelters infected with scabies, lice and all kinds of infectious diseases. The worst thing is that most people outside the shelters did not receive water for several weeks now. It is horrible that they have not been able to receive any clean drinking water that is not contaminated by sewage which can lead to diarrhoea and increases child mortality, especially among those under five years old”.

Ironside estimated that it will take 40 to 50 million USD in the next year to shelter families whose homes were destroyed in the war.