Nearly 2 in 3 homes in Gaza have been destroyed, says UNICEF

About two in three homes in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged, a UNICEF spokesperson lamented on Thursday, expressing his frustration over the devastation of families’ homes, Anadolu Agency reports.

James Elder, on X, highlighted the “decades” of hard work and investment that have been turned into a “nightmare”, with families struggling to save their homes only to see them destroyed again.

“You see rubble. And I see it as far as my eye can see,” he said in a video message. “Decades and decades, families saved and saved their family homes. And they look to me, and they say, ‘James, I’m too old. I don’t have time to do it again’.”

“How do these people start again?” he asked.

Elder urged “no more destruction and no more families, homes, dreams smashed.”

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since 7 October, 2023 cross-border attack by Palestinian group, Hamas, in which some1,200 people were killed.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

Nearly 34,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in Gaza, and over 76,600 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85 per cent of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60 per cent of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which, in January, issued an interim ruling that ordered it to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

READ: WHO: The extent of the destruction of Gaza’s hospitals is heartbreaking