In a grim repetition of violent episodes stemming from a brutal war that violates children's innocence and deprives them of their right to life, a new Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Strip on Sunday resulted in the deaths of 28 individuals, including five young twins, their mother, and an older brother, according to health officials in Gaza.
The Israeli bombardment included an early morning strike on a home in the town of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, which killed a woman and six of her children, according to reports from the Shahid Al-Aqsa Hospital. The children's grandfather, Mohamed Awad Khattab, stated that his daughter, a teacher, was with her husband and their six children when their home was bombed. The youngest child was 18 months old, while the other five were 10-year-old twins, according to the hospital.
Another airstrike east of Deir al-Balah resulted in at least four additional deaths, while an attack in the northern town of Jabalia targeted two apartments, killing two men, a woman, and her daughter, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Furthermore, two airstrikes in central Gaza led to the deaths of nine people, based on reports from Al-Awda Hospital.
**Horrific Conditions for Children**
The United Nations has warned that the Gaza Strip has become "the most dangerous place for children in the world," where a child is killed or injured every ten minutes due to ongoing Israeli bombardments. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has referred to horrifying scenes of children deprived of food, water, and basic medical care, while others suffer serious injuries from shrapnel and bullets.
The ongoing war in Gaza since October 7 has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 Palestinians, displacing the vast majority of the population of 2.3 million and prompting experts to warn of famine and the spread of diseases such as polio and others.
**Unprecedented Numbers**
Last March, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) announced that the number of children killed in the ongoing war on Gaza has exceeded the number of child fatalities in four years of conflicts worldwide. He noted that the number of children recorded as killed in just four months in Gaza surpasses the number of children killed in four years across all conflicts globally.
Lazzarini's post on the platform "X" referenced UN figures indicating that 12,193 children were killed in conflicts worldwide between 2019 and 2022. This data was compared to reports from the Ministry of Health in Gaza, which records over 12,300 child fatalities in the region between October and early February.
He also published a chart prepared using data from the UN and the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, showing a comparison between the number of children killed in Gaza during this war and those killed in wars over the past four years. The chart revealed that 12,193 children had died in wars globally in the last four years, while the number of children killed in Gaza reached over 12,300 by the time of the report in March.