By Kanishka Singh, Reuters
Displaced Palestinians gather to receive food at a donation point in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on 7 March, 2024. Photo: Yasser Qudihe / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP
The UN children's agency said on Sunday over 13,000 children have been killed in Gaza in Israel's offensive, adding many children were suffering from severe malnutrition and did not "even have the energy to cry".
"Thousands more have been injured or we can't even determine where they are. They may be stuck under rubble ... We haven't seen that rate of death among children in almost any other conflict in the world," UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell told CBS News' Face the Nation programme on Sunday.
"I've been in wards of children who are suffering from severe anaemia malnutrition, the whole ward is absolutely quiet. Because the children, the babies ... don't even have the energy to cry."
Russell said there were "very great bureaucratic challenges" moving trucks into Gaza for aid and assistance.
A Palestinian man carries the body of a child of the Abu Slemah family at Al Najar hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on 8 March 2024. Photo: AFP
International criticism has mounted on Israel due to the death toll of the war, the starvation crisis in Gaza, and allegations of blocking aid deliveries into the enclave.
A UN expert said earlier this month that Israel was destroying Gaza's food system as part of a broader "starvation campaign." Israel rejected the accusation.
Israel's military assault on Hamas-governed Gaza has displaced nearly its entire 2.3 million-person population, caused a starvation crisis, flattened most of the enclave, and killed more than 31,000 people, according to Gaza's health ministry. It has also led to accusations of genocide being probed in the World Court.
Israel denies the genocide charges and says it is acting in self-defence after the 7 October attack on Israel from Hamas that killed some 1200, according to Israeli tallies, and took scores of hostages.
One in three children under age two in northern Gaza is now acutely malnourished and famine is looming, the main UN agency operating in the Palestinian enclave said on Saturday.
- Reuters