10 children per day losing one or two legs in Gaza: UNRWA
Geneva, Switzerland – AFP
Ten children per day are losing one or both of their legs in Israel attacks in Gaza, the head of the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees said Tuesday.
“Basically we have every day 10 children who are losing one leg or two legs on average,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini told reporters in Geneva.
Citing figures from the UN children’s agency UNICEF, he said that figure “does not even include the arms and the hands, and we have many more” of these.
“Ten per day, that means around 2,000 children after the more than 260 days of this brutal war,” Lazzarini said.
He said amputation often takes place “in quite horrible conditions”, sometimes without anaesthesia.
Save the Children said on Monday that up to 21,000 children are estimated to be missing in the chaos of the war.
The Gaza health ministry says Israel has killed at least 37,658 people since early October last year.
UNRWA coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, but Lazzarini warned the agency was facing relentless attack and a deep funding crisis.
“We have cash until end of August,” he said Tuesday, adding that the agency still had “a shortfall of about $140 million… to bridge the end of the year”.
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