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UNICEF chief warns Gaza kids face “post-generational challenges”

Washington DC, US
Reuters

After a year of military operations between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the head of UNICEF warned that children there will face “post-generational challenges” due to the conflict.

“If you look at Gaza really through the eyes of a child, it is a hellscape,” UNICEF’s executive director Catherine Russell told CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday, noting the toll of family deaths and displacements, as well as ongoing lack of food and clean water.


Palestinian children sit at the site of an Israeli strike on the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, where displaced people were taking shelter in tents, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, on 5th September, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Ramadan Abed/File photo

“They are so traumatised by what’s happening,” Russell said of the kids. “Even if we can get more supplies in there, the trauma that these children are suffering is going to have lifetime and even post-generational challenges for them.”

The fighting started on 7th October, 2023, when Hamas fighters killed 1,200 civilians and took about 250 hostages in Israel, according to Israeli tallies.

Russell said it remains “very dangerous” to move humanitarian aid in Gaza. However, she credited her organisation with a “success story” of vaccinating thousands of children for polio in the area.

On the latest Israeli military operations in Lebanon targeting Iran-backed group Hezbollah, the UNICEF director said “the speed and intensity is shocking” and that “it makes it challenging for us” to reach the approximately one million displaced people there.

“I feel confident at this point that we can meet the needs but it is taking a tremendous amount of effort on our part to do it,” Russell said.

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