By Deutsche Welle
Jun 24, 2024, 7:38 PM EDT
Some 21,000 children are missing in the Gaza Strip, many of them trapped under rubble, dead or in unmarked mass graves, according to a report published by the organization Save the Children.
“At least 10,000 people are missing under the rubble, presumed dead. It is reported that children represent 43% of the total victims in this devastating war. Therefore, it is reasonable to estimate that at least 5,160 children have died under the rubble,” he observes.
“In addition, the bodies of children were recently found in mass graves, and many of them show signs of torture,” they added.
17,000 children alone
The children’s aid organization also estimates that some 17,000 children are currently alone, orphaned or separated from their parents, due to constant forced displacement.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, controlled by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, more than 15,800 children have died since the conflict began in October and 3,500 are at risk of death from malnutrition.
“Children buried in unmarked graves”
“Thousands of missing Palestinian children are trapped under rubble, buried in unmarked graves, damaged beyond recognition by explosives, detained by Israeli forces or lost in the chaos of the conflict,” Save the Children notes.
Save the Children also recalls that at least 33 children were killed in the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 250 were kidnapped.
“More than a million people, 600,000 of them children, are at risk while they remain sheltered in Rafah,” they write on the Save the Children website, where they request donations to send humanitarian aid.
Keep reading:
- Benjamin Netanyahu says he is prepared for a “partial agreement”, but “not to stop the war”
- Joseph Borrell: “humanitarian aid in Gaza is now almost impossible”
- The “fiasco” of the $230 million humanitarian dock built by the US in Gaza for humanitarian aid and that barely works