With over 20,000 killed by Israel over two years, Gaza's children are paying the heaviest price of its ongoing genocide in the Palestinian territory.
The U.N.'s children's body, UNICEF on Tuesday decried the grave price paid by innocent children in Gaza, calling on Israel to declare an immediate cease-fire to end what it called an "unprecedented" violence in the besieged enclave.
"For nearly two years now, children have paid the heaviest price in this crisis," UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires said in Geneva.
He added that "an average of one child (is) either killed or maimed every 17 minutes," calling the figure "unacceptable" and "staggering."
Pires, on the second anniversary of the Israeli war, stressed that children are enduring severe physical and psychological trauma, having been orphaned or displaced multiple times, and exposed to "horrors that no child should ever have to look at or live."
He said UNICEF welcomes peace efforts by the U.S. but warned that bombardments and airstrikes continue in both northern and southern Gaza.
Earlier Monday, the Gaza authorities confirmed that the Israeli army killed nearly 20,000 children in Gaza since October 2023.
Gaza’s Government Media Office said the bodies of more than 19,450 children were brought to hospitals, while over 12,500 women were also killed, including about 10,160 whose bodies were recovered.
UNICEF, meanwhile, also raised alarm over repeated denials of humanitarian access. Pires said incubators and ventilators desperately needed for premature babies have been blocked.
"We're talking about children sharing oxygen masks in order to stay alive," he said, noting that one in five babies in Gaza is now born prematurely.
The agency is still awaiting clearance to deliver critical medical equipment from the north to the south, despite repeated requests.
Malnutrition is also surging, with more than 10,000 children diagnosed with acute malnutrition in the past two months, he said.
Around 2,400 children in Gaza City are currently receiving treatment for severe acute malnutrition, which Pires warned could prove fatal if they are cut off from care.
"The disproportionate response that followed (since October 2023), which today continues, needs to end, and it needs to end now," he implored.
The Israeli military has killed over 67,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since October 2023.
The relentless attacks have rendered the enclave all but uninhabitable and has led to mass displacement, starvation and the spread of disease.
