Around 130,000 Palestinian children under the age of ten lack food and medicine due to the new Israeli military offensive in northern Gaza, the non-governmental organization Save the Children declared today.
The NGO highlighted that the children have been trapped for 50 days in areas in the north of the enclave that are practically inaccessible to humanitarian personnel.
Children are not receiving food or medicine despite warnings from several institutions about famine in the Palestinian enclave, when Israel is repeatedly accused of creating restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The NGO stated that Palestinian children living in these areas have been almost completely deprived of food, water and medicine since October 6, when Israel declared the area closed in the face of a new ground offensive, which led the Famine Review Committee to state that famine is imminent or already occurring.
The organization Save the Children specified that it has not been able to enter northern Gaza for more than seven weeks to deliver food packages to 5,000 families, along with 725 hygiene kits and other humanitarian aid supplies. Previously, it had managed to intervene through local partners to distribute aid to around 15,000 children.
In addition to these children, there are around 10,000 others living in Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanun who did not receive the second dose of polio vaccine during the recent vaccination campaign.
For all these reasons, the NGO's Middle East director general, Jeremy Stoner, said the situation in that area is not suitable for human survival.
"Humanitarian aid has reached rock bottom and the dire situation in northern Gaza is the tip of a terrible iceberg," Stoner explained.
Stoner called for "safe and immediate humanitarian access" so that "food, water, winter supplies and medical assistance reach people trapped in the area."
The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) warned of the risk that unactivated explosive devices pose to the population of Gaza, especially when searching through the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli attacks to try to find clothes and other basic items.
The agency noted in a report that Gazans are constantly fleeing areas of active conflict, often returning to areas considered dangerous. Thus, 70% of those interviewed by the NGO indicated that they returned to areas that had witnessed active fighting, which increases the risk of finding unactivated explosives.
Thus, the DRC detailed that the situation is being worsened by the lack of humanitarian aid, which during the last six weeks has dropped to 40 trucks per day, well below the 500 per day recorded before the start of the Israeli offensive on October 8, 2023 in Palestinian enclave.
As a result, 58% of respondents had to sift through the rubble to find goods and materials, including clothes for their children. Furthermore, 23% of these said they knew someone who died or was injured by the explosion of these devices during these collection tasks. There are also cases of children playing with these devices and people taking them by mistake after mistaking them for firewood.
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