- Doctors in Gaza say children are being treated in hospitals without proper anaesthesia, amid a critical lack of medical supplies, basic food and other necessities in the besieged enclave
As the war between Hamas and Israel rages on, aid agencies say the children of Gaza are being killed at an “unimaginable” rate and warn that many more children are at grave risk, including those who remain trapped under rubble.
Those lucky to survive face a host of future physical and mental health problems, doctors say, amid reports children are also receiving amputations without pain relief.
How many children have died in Gaza since 7 October?
Aid and development agency Save the Children says the number of children reported killed in Gaza in just three weeks — more than 3,542 — has surpassed the annual number of children killed across the world’s conflict zones in the past three years.
That’s nearly half of the 8,525 people who’ve been reported as killed by the Gaza Ministry of Health in the besieged enclave.
“Three weeks of violence have ripped children from families and torn through their lives at an unimaginable rate,” said Save the Children country director for the occupied Palestinian territory Jason Lee.
A further 1,000 children who’ve been reported missing are assumed to be under the rubble, the aid group added, following Israeli airstrikes.
A Palestinian man carries a child killed following the Israeli Defence Force’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Rafah on 24 October. Source: AP / AP
Israel Defence Forces are pounding Gaza in retaliation to Hamas’ deadly 7 October attacks in Israel, in which over 1,400 Israelis were killed by the militant group.
Gaza’s children are being born and raised in war
Australian doctor Natalie Thurtle, who worked for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Gaza in 2021, said the impact of the war on children has been “catastrophic”.
“This is the most extreme event in Gaza that I’m aware of in terms of loss of life, in terms of physical injuries, in terms of loss of infrastructure, loss of homes,” she told SBS News.
She said MSF doctors in Gaza have operated on children with limited anaesthesia and treated newly arrived orphans.
As Israel starts its ground invasion, where can Gazans go?
“(They were) seeing children, multiple children who have no surviving family member to care for them,” Thurtle said.
An MSF doctor in Gaza has also told the UK’s Channel 4 news that doctors have been forced to perform amputations for children without anaesthesia.
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“Senior colleagues at MSF are spending hours per day searching for water. It’s really not okay,” Thurtle said.
A trickle of aid, but no fuel, has been allowed into Gaza since the attack by Hamas and Israel’s announcement of a siege.
This week, people stormed UN warehouses in Gaza in search of food.
What are the long-term impacts on children?
For those children who will survive, a difficult life ahead with the possibility of recovery is “extremely limited”, Thurtle said.
Amid the ensuing war, about 160 babies are being born daily in Gaza, she said.
Palestinian children who have fled their homes due to Israeli strikes play games as they shelter at a United Nations-run school in Gaza. Credit: AAP
“The exposure to chronic trauma from living under occupation from previous wars, but combined with what’s happening now is going to have a devastating impact on the mental health of all children in Gaza,” Thurtle said.
She said that, when she was working in Gaza in 2021, her staff described children who had become “completely mute and didn’t speak any more”, others who were bedwetting at the age of nine, and some who’d developed severe behavioural problems and regressed developmentally.
“So when the brain is developing and exposed to conflict-level trauma, that loss is profoundly impactful and actually not something that really people can come back from easily, even in a high functioning system where there’s appropriate mental health support.
“They don’t have that and what they have has now been destroyed. So the possibility for recovery is extremely limited.”
Why is the child death toll high in Gaza?
Gaza’s population is just over two million – and almost half of them are children.
Thurtle said the number of child deaths was “extremely high” because people had nowhere to go in a densely populated area, under blockade.
“MSF is calling for a ceasefire and for proper access for humanitarian aid to reach 2.3 million people in Gaza,” she said.
“So we need these things – a basic restoration of humanity to occur.”
Gaza has been under an air, sea and land blockade for the 16 years since Hamas took over. The blockade is imposed by Israel, and Egypt at the southern border.
Nearly 70 per cent of those reported killed in the past three weeks are children and women, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
A Palestinian man mourns next to the body of his child who was killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza Strip, at the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on 24 October. Source: AP / AP
“They feel the world is equating all of them to Hamas. This is dangerous. And we know this too well from previous conflicts and crises,” the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said in a briefing on Tuesday.
Israel says Hamas uses civilians as human shields and the United States has questioned the accuracy of the death toll, saying the Gaza Health Ministry is run by the militant group. In response, the Gaza Health Ministry has released the names and IDs of all those killed in Gaza since 7 October.
Hamas is a Palestinian military and political group that has gained power in the Gaza Strip since winning legislative elections there in 2006.
Its stated aim is to establish a Palestinian state, while refusing to recognise Israel’s right to exist.
Hamas, in its entirety, is designated as a terrorist organisation by countries including Australia, Canada, the UK and the US while New Zealand and Paraguay list only its military wing as a terrorist group.
Other countries voted against a UN resolution condemning Hamas, in its entirety, as a terrorist organisation.
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