UNICEF: 50,000 children in Gaza have died or been injured since Oct. 2023
A senior official of the United Nations Children's Fund says 50,000 children in the Gaza Strip have died or been injured since fighting between Israel and Hamas erupted in October 2023.
UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Kitty van der Heijden made the comment in an exclusive interview with NHK in Tokyo on Thursday.
She noted that there is increasing malnutrition in Gaza and a medical care system on the verge of collapse.
Van der Heijden said personnel of UN-led aid delivery programs have been ''unable to reach children that need us'' since Israel imposed a complete blockade in March.
She called on all parties to the conflict to stop the violence and allow UN staff to resume aid deliveries in Gaza "so that children finally can find a little bit of hope."
Van der Heijden described the current global situation as ''the worst time to be a child.'' She said one in every six children in the world ''is either living in conflict or running away" from it, which is unprecedented in the history of UNICEF.
Regarding the conflict between Israel and Iran, van der Heijden said children on both sides have died and suffered injuries. She added that UNICEF, along with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, is calling on the two countries to exercise the maximum restraint.
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NHK
7 hours ago
- NHK
UNICEF: 50,000 children in Gaza have died or been injured since Oct. 2023
A senior official of the United Nations Children's Fund says 50,000 children in the Gaza Strip have died or been injured since fighting between Israel and Hamas erupted in October 2023. UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Kitty van der Heijden made the comment in an exclusive interview with NHK in Tokyo on Thursday. She noted that there is increasing malnutrition in Gaza and a medical care system on the verge of collapse. Van der Heijden said personnel of UN-led aid delivery programs have been ''unable to reach children that need us'' since Israel imposed a complete blockade in March. She called on all parties to the conflict to stop the violence and allow UN staff to resume aid deliveries in Gaza "so that children finally can find a little bit of hope." Van der Heijden described the current global situation as ''the worst time to be a child.'' She said one in every six children in the world ''is either living in conflict or running away" from it, which is unprecedented in the history of UNICEF. Regarding the conflict between Israel and Iran, van der Heijden said children on both sides have died and suffered injuries. She added that UNICEF, along with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, is calling on the two countries to exercise the maximum restraint.
Japan Today
a day ago
- Japan Today
Israeli attacks kill 140 in Gaza in 24 hours, medics say
Mourners react during the funeral of Palestinians killed on Tuesday by Israeli fire while seeking aid in northern Gaza, according to Gaza's health ministry, at Al-Shifa Hospital, in Gaza City, June 18, 2025. REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas By Nidal al-Mughrabi Israeli gunfire and strikes killed at least 140 people across Gaza in the past 24 hours, local health officials said, as some Palestinians in the Strip said their plight was being forgotten as attention has shifted to the air war between Israel and Iran. At least 40 of those killed over the past day died as a result of Israeli gunfire and airstrikes on Wednesday, Gaza's health ministry said. The deaths included the latest in near daily killings of Palestinians seeking aid in the three weeks since Israel partially lifted a total blockade on the territory. Medics said separate airstrikes on homes in the Maghazi refugee camp, the Zeitoun neighborhood and Gaza City killed at least 21 people, while five others were killed in an airstrike on an encampment in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Fourteen more people were killed in Israeli fire at crowds of Palestinians awaiting aid trucks brought in by the United Nations along the Salahuddin road in central Gaza, medics said. Asked about the Salahuddin road incident, the Israel Defense Forces said that despite repeated warnings that the area was an active combat zone, individuals approached troops operating in the Nuseirat area in the central Gaza Strip in a manner that posed a threat to forces. Troops fired warning shots, it said, adding that it was unaware of injuries. Regarding other strikes, the IDF said it was "operating to dismantle Hamas military capabilities" while taking "feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm". On Tuesday, Gaza's health ministry said 397 Palestinians among those trying to get food aid had been killed and more than 3,000 wounded since aid deliveries restarted in late May. Some in Gaza expressed concern that the latest escalations in the war between Israel and Hamas that began in October 2023 would be overlooked due to the new Israel-Iran conflict. "People are being slaughtered in Gaza, day and night, but attention has shifted to the Iran-Israel war. There is little news about Gaza these days," said Adel, a resident of Gaza City. "Whoever doesn't die from Israeli bombs dies from hunger. People risk their lives every day to get food, and they also get killed and their blood smears the sacks of flour they thought they had won," he told Reuters via a chat app. 'FORGOTTEN' Israel is now channelling much of the aid into Gaza through a new U.S.- and Israeli-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which uses private U.S. security and logistics firms and operates a handful of distribution sites in areas guarded by Israeli forces. Israel has said it will continue to allow aid into Gaza, home to more than 2 million people, while ensuring it doesn't get to Hamas. Hamas denies seizing aid, saying Israel uses hunger as a weapon. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, called the current system for distributing aid "a disgrace & a stain on our collective consciousness", in a post on X on Wednesday. The war in Gaza was triggered when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli allies. Israel's subsequent military assault has killed nearly 55,600 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry, displaced almost all the territory's residents, and caused a severe hunger crisis. The World Food Program called on Wednesday for a big increase in food distribution in Gaza, saying that the 9,000 metric tons it had dispatched over the last four weeks inside Gaza represented a "tiny fraction" of what was needed. "The fear of starvation and desperate need for food is causing large crowds to gather along well-known transport routes, hoping to intercept and access humanitarian supplies while in transit," the WFP said in a statement. "Any violence resulting in starving people being killed or injured while seeking life-saving assistance is completely unacceptable," it added. Palestinians in Gaza have been closely following Israel's air war with Iran, long a major supporter of Hamas. "We are maybe happy to see Israel suffer from Iranian rockets, but at the end of the day, one more day in this war costs the lives of tens of innocent people," said 47-year-old Shaban Abed, a father of five from northern Gaza. "We just hope that a comprehensive solution could be reached to end the war in Gaza, too. We are being forgotten." © Thomson Reuters 2025.
Japan Times
10-06-2025
- Japan Times
Palestinians' dangerous ordeal to reach Israeli-approved aid
When university professor Nizam Salama made his way to a southern Gaza aid point last week, he came under fire twice, was crushed in a desperate crowd of hungry people and finally left empty handed. Shooting first started shortly after he left his family's tent at 3 a.m. on June 3 to join crowds on the coast road heading towards the aid site in the city of Rafah run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new U.S.-based organization working with private military contractors to deliver aid in Gaza. The second time Salama came under fire was at Alam Roundabout close to the aid delivery site, where he saw six dead bodies. Twenty-seven people were killed that day by Israeli fire on aid seekers, Palestinian health authorities said. Israel said its forces had shot at a group of people they viewed as a threat and the military is investigating the incident. At the aid delivery site, known as SDS 1, queues snaked through narrow cage-like fences before gates were opened to an area surrounded by sand barriers where packages of supplies were left on tables and in boxes on the ground, according to undated CCTV video distributed by GHF. Salama said the rush of thousands of people once the gates opened was a "death trap." A boy crouches as Palestinians gather to collect what remains of relief supplies from the GHF distribution center in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on June 5. | REUTERS "Survival is for the stronger: people who are fitter and can make it earlier and can push harder to win the package," he said. "I felt my ribs going into each other. My chest was going into itself. My breath ... I couldn't breathe. People were shouting; they couldn't breathe at all." Reuters could not independently verify all the details of Salama's account. It matched the testimonies of two other aid seekers, who spoke of crawling and ducking as bullets rattled overhead on their way to or from the aid distribution sites. All three witnesses said they saw dead bodies on their journeys to and from the Rafah sites. A statement from a nearby Red Cross field hospital confirmed the number of dead from the attack near the aid site on June 3. Asked about the high number of deaths since it began operations on May 26, GHF said there had been no casualties at or in the close vicinity of its site. The Israeli military didn't respond to detailed requests for comment. Israeli military spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin told reporters on Sunday that Hamas was "doing its best" to provoke troops, who "shoot to stop the threat" in what he called a war zone in the vicinity of the aid sites. He said military investigations were underway "to see where we were wrong." Salama, 52, had heard enough about the new system to know it would be difficult to get aid, he said, but his five children — including two adults, two teenagers and a 9-year-old — needed food. They have been eating only lentils or pasta for months, he said, often only a single meal a day. Palestinian children hold pots and pans as they wait at a hot meal distribution point in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip. | AFP-Jiji "I was completely against going to the aid site of the American company (GHF) because I knew and I had heard how humiliating it is to do so, but I had no choice because of the bad need to feed my family," said the professor of education administration. In total, 127 Palestinians have been killed trying to get aid from GHF sites in almost daily shootings since distribution under the new system began two weeks ago, Gaza's health authority said on Monday. The system appears to violate core principles of humanitarian aid, said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, a major humanitarian organization. He compared it to the Hunger Games, the dystopian novels that set people to run and fight to the death. "A few will be rewarded and the many will only risk their lives for nothing," Egeland said. "International humanitarian law has prescribed that aid in war zones should be provided by neutral intermediaries that can make sure that the most vulnerable will get the relief according to needs alone and not as part of a political or military strategy," he said. GHF did not directly respond to a question about its neutrality, replying that it had securely delivered enough aid for more than 11 million meals in two weeks. Gaza's population is around 2.1 million people. Famine risk Israel allowed limited U.N.-led aid operations to resume on May 19 after an 11-week blockade in the enclave, where experts a week earlier warned a famine looms. The U.N. has described the aid allowed into Gaza as "drop in the ocean." Separate to the U.N. operation, Israel allowed GHF to open four sites in Gaza, bypassing traditional aid groups. The GHF sites are overseen by a U.S. logistics company run by a former CIA official and part-owned by a Chicago-based private equity firm, with security provided by U.S. military veterans working for a private contractor, two sources have said. Gaza University professor Nizam Salama sits inside the tent where he and his family have taken refuge, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on June 5. | REUTERS An Israeli defense official involved in humanitarian matters said GHF's distribution centers were sufficient for around 1.2 million people. Israel and the United States have urged the U.N. to work with GHF, which has seen a high churn of top personnel, although both countries deny funding it. Reuters has not been able to establish who provides the funding for the organization, but reported last week that Washington was considering an Israeli request to put in $500 million. GHF coordinates with the Israeli army for access, the foundation said, adding that it was looking to open more distribution points. It has paused then resumed deliveries several times after the shooting incidents, including on Monday. Last week, it urged the Israeli army to improve civilian safety beyond the perimeter of its operations. GHF said the U.N. was failing to deliver aid, pointing to a spate of recent lootings. Israel says the U.N.'s aid deliveries have previously been hijacked by Hamas to feed their own militants. Hamas has denied stealing aid and the U.N. denies its aid operations help Hamas. The U.N., which has handled previous aid deliveries into Gaza, says it has over 400 distribution points for aid in the territory. On Monday it described an increasingly anarchic situation of looting and has called on Israel to allow more of its trucks to move safely. Shooting starts Salama and four neighbors set out from Mawasi, in the Khan Younis area of the southern Gaza Strip, at 3 a.m. on Tuesday for the aid site, taking two hours to reach Rafah, which is several miles away near the Egyptian border. Shooting started early in their journey. Some fire was coming from the sea, he said, consistent with other accounts of the incidents. Israel's military controls the sea around Gaza. Mourners pray during the funeral of Palestinians killed, in what the Gaza health ministry say was Israeli fire near a distribution site in Rafah, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on June 3. | REUTERS His small group decided to press on. In the dark, the way was uneven and he repeatedly fell, he said. "I saw people carrying wounded persons and heading back with them towards Khan Younis," he said. By the time they reached Alam Roundabout in Rafah, about a kilometer from the site, there was a vast crowd. There was more shooting and he saw bullets hitting nearby. "You must duck and stay on the ground," he said, describing casualties with wounds to the head, chest and legs. He saw bodies nearby, including a woman, along with "many" injured people, he said. Another aid seeker interviewed by Reuters, who also walked to Rafah on June 3 in the early morning, described repeated gunfire during the journey. At one point, he and everyone around him crawled for a stretch of several hundred meters, fearing being shot. He saw a body with a wound to the head about 100 meters from the aid site, he said. The Red Cross Field Hospital in Rafah received a mass casualty influx of 184 patients on June 3, the majority of them injured by gunshots, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement, calling it the highest number of weapon-wounded patients the hospital had ever received in a single incident. There were 27 fatalities. "All responsive patients said they were trying to reach an assistance distribution site," the statement said. When Salama finally arrived at the aid point on June 3, there was nothing left. "Everyone was standing pulling cardboard boxes from the floor that were empty," he said. "Unfortunately I found nothing: a very, very, very big zero." Although the aid was gone, ever more people were arriving. "The flood of people pushes you to the front while I was trying to go back," he said. As he was pushed further toward where GHF guards were located, he saw them using pepper spray on the crowd, he said. GHF said it was not aware of the pepper spray incident but said its workers used nonlethal measures to protect civilians. "I started shouting at the top of my lungs, brothers I don't want anything, I just want to leave, I just want to leave the place," Salama said. "I left empty-handed ... I went back home depressed, sad and angry and hungry too," he said.
