More than 3,600 Palestinian children were killed in the first 25 days of the war between Israel and Hamas, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry. They were hit by airstrikes, smashed by misfired rockets, burned by blasts and crushed by buildings, and among them were newborns and toddlers, avid readers, aspiring journalists and boys who thought they’d be safe in a church.
Nearly half of the crowded strip’s 2.3 million inhabitants are under 18, and children account for 40 per cent of those killed so far in the war. An Associated Press analysis of Gaza health ministry data released last week showed that as of October 26, 2,001 children ages 12 and under had been killed, including 615 who were 3 or younger.
“When houses are destroyed, they collapse on the heads of children,” writer Adam al-Madhoun said on Wednesday as he comforted his four-year-old daughter Kenzi at the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah. She survived an airstrike that ripped off her right arm, crushed her left leg and fractured her skull.
Israel says its airstrikes target Hamas militant sites and infrastructure, and it accuses the group of using civilians as human shields. It also says more than 500 militant rockets have misfired and landed in Gaza, killing an unknown number of Palestinians.
More children have been killed in just over three weeks in Gaza than in all of the world’s conflicts combined in each of the past three years, according to the global charity Save the Children. For example, it said, 2,985 children were killed across two dozen war zones throughout last year.
“Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children,” said James Elder, a spokesperson for Unicef, the UN children’s agency.
Images and footage of shell-shocked children being pulled from rubble in Gaza or writhing on dirty hospital gurneys have become commonplace and have fueled protests around the world.
Scenes from recent airstrikes included a rescuer cradling a limp toddler in a bloodied white tutu, a bespectacled father shrieking as he clutched his dead child tight to his chest, and a dazed young boy covered in blood and dust staggering alone through the ruins.
“It’s a curse to be a parent in Gaza,” said Ahmed Modawikh, a 40-year-old carpenter from Gaza City whose life was shattered by the death of his 8-year-old daughter during five days of fighting in May.