Israel-Hamas war, Gaza genocide

[SvennoJ]

Children continue to be killed in Gaza ‘in the most horrific ways imaginable’

Alexandra Saieh, a spokeswoman for Save the Children, told Al Jazeera that Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip were continuing to kill and maim children. “There’s no place in Gaza that can offer respite to civilians, including children, and there is no place in Gaza that is safe,” she said from Washington, DC.

“We are continuing to see children being killed in the most horrific ways imaginable. We’ve seen children – in the last few weeks and over the course of the last nine months – dismembered, their limbs are ripped off of them by explosive weapons, they are being crushed by falling rubble… it is just relentless.”

Saieh noted that Save the Children estimates that more than 20,000 children in Gaza are unaccounted for.

“This includes children who are separated from their families and more than 4,000 who are under the rubble and are presumed dead. It also includes children who are buried in unmarked graves and children who are detained and disappeared by Israeli forces. That comes on top of more than 14,000 children who have been killed and thousands more who have been maimed,” she said.

Israeli attacks obstructing delivery of humanitarian aid

Saieh at Save the Children further said that Israeli attacks like the latest bombing of a UNRWA school in Nuseirat make the delivery of humanitarian aid “almost impossible”.

“The number one obstacle to delivering aid right now is safety. Save the Children and other organisations rely on [the] safety of schools, of camps to be able to deliver any humanitarian assistance,” she told Al Jazeera.

“Over the course of the past nine months, we’ve seen more than 270 aid workers killed, the majority of them Palestinian. We have not seen any assurances that aid operations and aid workers will be guaranteed any sort of safety and we continue to see immense restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

We are continuing to see supplies obstructed from coming into the Gaza Strip,” she said. “What we need is a ceasefire. What we need is for countries to stop supplying weapons that are fuelling this crisis.”