Geneva. On June 25, UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said in a press conference that the numbers in Gaza are shocking: “4,000 children are missing, 17,000 unaccompanied… this is in addition to the 14,000 children killed. Every day, an average of 10 children lose one or two legs.”
An average of 10 Palestinian children a day lose one or both legs, revealed the Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). “This gives you an idea of the scope of the kind of childhood a child can have in Gaza,” explained Philippe Lazzarini.
Those comments were made Tuesday during a press conference at the UN headquarters in Geneva. The statistic cited does not include lost arms and hands, he pointed out. “Ten a day, that’s around 2,000 children after more than 260 days of this brutal war. Furthermore, amputations often occur under truly horrific conditions, and sometimes without anesthesia.”
Lazzarini cited a report published by Save the Children which estimates that “there are up to 21,000 children have disappeared” since the start of the attack on the Gaza Strip, either because they were buried under rubble, captured, buried in unmarked graves, or because they lost contact with their families and relatives.
Despite the difficulty in collecting and verifying the numbers, Save the Children has confirmed that “at least 17,000 children in the Gaza Strip are unaccompanied by their families and 4,000 are missing after being buried under the rubble.”
Lazzarini warned again that UNRWA has liquidity “until the end of August,” adding that the agency still has “a deficit of around $140 million to fill by the end of the year.”
Regarding the situation in the occupied West Bank, he noted that UNRWA is very concerned about the ongoing situation, as the Palestinians are facing a “silent war.” The intensity of Israeli military operations in refugee camps in the West Bank has become very evident, Lazzarini added.
(Sources: MEMO and agencies).
Translation for InfoPal by Edy Meroli
