UNRWA TOP OFFICIAL: 10 CHILDREN LOSE ONE OR BOTH LEGS EVERY DAY IN GAZA

GENEVA, June 26 (Bernama-WAFA) -- Ten children per day are losing one or both of their legs in the ongoing Israeli genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, according to the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN) Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarini.

Palestine News and Info Agency reported Lazzarini, speaking in a press conference at the UNRWA Advisory Commission in Geneva said: “Basically, we have every day 10 children who are losing one leg or two legs on average. This gives you an idea of the scope of the type of childhood, a child can have in Gaza, ”. 

Citing figures from the UN Children's Fund UNICEF, he said that figure "does not even include the arms and the hands, and we have many more" of these.

"Ten per day, that means around 2,000 children after the more than 260 days of this brutal war," Lazzarini said. He said amputation often takes place "in quite horrible conditions," sometimes without anesthesia. Save the Children said on Monday that up to 21,000 children are estimated to be missing in the chaos of the war.

In an update on the situation in the shattered enclave, the UNRWA Commissioner-General noted that some 4,000 children have been reported missing and 17,000 are unaccompanied after nearly nine months of intense hostilities. “Add this to the reported 14,000 children who have been killed since the beginning of the war.” he added, before condemning the latest reported attack on a school run by the UN agency in Gaza City.

Responding to the latest report from food insecurity experts at IPC - the leading international authority on hunger emergencies, that more than one in five households “go entire days without eating”, the UNRWA chief said:

“You saw the latest IPC (report), one in five persons living in a catastrophic nutritional situation. The acute malnutrition impacts nearly the entire population in Gaza, more than 90 per cent.”

“Between those being in emergency and catastrophic situation - and catastrophic means risk of famine is here at any time between now and September - we have in total more than one million people,” he added.

Lazzarini warned the agency was facing a deep funding crisis since January, when many countries suspended funding following Israel’s false allegations that 12 of its 13,000 Gaza employees of involvement in the October 7 attack.

"We have cash until end of August," he said Tuesday, adding that the agency still had "a shortfall of about US$140 million... to bridge the end of the year."

Commenting on the situation in the occupied West Bank, Lazzarini voiced his grave concerns about “the situation also in the West Bank where we keep saying that a kind of a silent war is taking place.”

“If there wouldn't be Gaza today, the West Bank would hit the headlines. More than 500 people have been killed since 7 October. But what is also striking when we go to the West Bank is the intensity of the operations taking place in the refugee camps or in the villages.”

He pointed out that there has been an “absence of attention given to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict over the last ten years.

-- BERNAMA-WAFA