UNICEF: 50,000 Children Killed or Injured in Gaza
Rabat_ As the world marks the International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression, few places reflect the meaning of this day with more devastating clarity than the Gaza Strip, where Israel's ongoing genocide has turned Palestinian childhood into a global site of horror, grief, and impunity.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement issued a statement on the occasion, urging immediate and decisive global action to stop the genocide in Gaza. The Palestinian-led movement called for 'targeted lawful diplomatic, sports and other sanctions on Israel' to halt the mass killing of civilians, especially children.
It also reiterated the demand for a comprehensive military and energy embargo on Israel, insisting that those responsible for the massacres in Palestine be prosecuted through international legal mechanisms. The world must not only 'stand in mourning, but in urgent demand for justice,' the statement stressed.
'Nowhere is this day more tragically embodied than against Palestinian children in Gaza, where Israel's ongoing and livestreamed genocide has resulted in the mass killing of Palestinian children,' the BDS movement declared. It recalled that UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned in November 2023 that Gaza was 'becoming a graveyard for children.'
Nearly 20 months into Israel's genocidal assault, the phrase is no longer metaphorical. Even the graveyards themselves have been bombed. The scale of violence unleashed on Gaza's children defies moral comprehension and numerical abstraction.
Israel's unimaginable violence in Gaza
In a statement on May 27, UNICEF revealed that over 50,000 children have been killed or injured in Gaza since Israel began its assault in October 2023. The UN agency has described this grim figure as 'unimaginable.'
Edouard Beigbeder, UNICEF's Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, condemned the violence as part of a pattern of systemic, targeted harm. His statement marked the last weekend of May as another chapter of carnage:
On May 24, an Israeli airstrike obliterated the al-Najjar family home in Khan Younis, killing nearly all ten siblings under the age of 12. Only one child survived, critically injured. On May 27, a school in Gaza City sheltering displaced families was attacked, reportedly killing at least 31 people, including 18 children.
'These children — lives that should never be reduced to numbers — are now part of a long, harrowing list of unimaginable horrors,' Beigbeder said. 'Grave violations against children, the blockade of aid, starvation, forced displacement, and the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure — in essence, the destruction of life itself in the Gaza Strip.'
Long before the genocide in Gaza escalated, Palestinian children held a haunting place in Arab consciousness. And now more than ever, they stand as symbols of resilience, born into brutal military occupation, exile, siege, and ethnic cleansing. Israel has robbed generations of Palestinians of the sweet oblivion of childhood.
Today, the image of a Palestinian child is one of unimaginable grief: thousand-yard stares, lone survivors sitting beside the corpses of their families, tiny hands carrying bloodied remains and amputated limbs. These children identify their mothers only by strands of hair, die with a fist of rice clutched in their hands, or lie weightless under the rubble of their homes, their souls hovering silently above.
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