Save the Children: 'Every hour without a ceasefire children die in Gaza'

By Linda Bordoni

“World leaders must secure a ceasefire now. Every hour without one, more children will pay the price for broken politics with their lives and futures. There will be no safe place in Gaza until then.”

This is the appeal of Save the Children’s country director in the occupied Palestinian territory as the Israeli offensive against Hamas continues unabated and is now focused on the south of the Gaza Strip.

In a statement following the collapse on Sunday of a one-week truce between the warring sides, Jason Lee said “I’m in the south of Gaza where children and their families are scrambling for safety. But there is nowhere safe in Gaza. There is nowhere to go.”

“Families,” he continued, “are being warned by Israeli authorities to move, once again, forcibly displacing them into smaller and smaller areas with no guarantee of safety or return, and without the necessary infrastructure and access to services to support life.”

Lee noted that the entire child population in Gaza has been left with nowhere safe to go as ground military operations began in Khan Younis,  a city in the south of Gaza, where the civilian population had previously been told to relocate for safety by Israeli forces, but is now also under attack.

Meanwhile, In northern Gaza, hundreds of thousands of families remain stranded and unsafe, and with critical infrastructure and services like hospitals and sanitation decimated, are at risk of starvation, disease, injury and death.

Since the start of the war on 7 October, 16,248 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including 7,112. Many are missing and feared dead under the rubble of bombed buildings.