UN: Child casualties in West Bank have risen by 250% since October
By Joseph Tulloch
A new press release from UNICEF, the UN Children’s charity, has stressed that child casualties in Palestine’s West Bank have risen by almost 250% since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October last year.
Although the war is being fought only in the Gaza Strip, the UN communiqué highlights that it is having deadly consequences for all Palestinian civilians, regardless of their area of residence.
The Gaza Strip and the West Bank are the two halves of what the Vatican – together with a majority of the world’s countries – recognises as the State of Palestine.
“Horrific” violence against children
The UN statement notes that 143 children have been killed in the West Bank – including East Jerusalem – since October 2023, an increase of nearly 250 per cent compared to the previous nine months, during which 41 Palestinian children were killed.
Two Israeli children, the UN adds, have been killed in the West Bank during that same period.
Moreover, during these last nine months, more than 440 Palestinian children have been injured with live ammunition.
UNICEF director Catherine Russell said that children living in the West Bank have been "exposed to horrific violence” for many years now, but the situation has recently “deteriorated significantly”.
“We are seeing frequent allegations of Palestinian children being detained on their way home from school,” she said, “or shot while walking on the streets. The violence needs to stop now.”
Although the child casualty figures for the West Bank are high, they pale in comparison to those in Gaza.
Back in May, a UN report put the number of confirmed child deaths at 7,797, and said that, of the fully identified fatalities in the Strip, 52% were women and children.
Pope: Civilians in Gaza “at the limit”
Pope Francis has been calling for a ceasefire in Gaza since October 27, 2023, longer than almost any other world leader.
At his Urbi et Orbi Easter message for this year, he said that Gaza's civilian population is “at the limit of what it can endure”.
“How much suffering we see in the eyes of the children: the children in those lands at war have forgotten how to smile! With those eyes, Pope Francis said "they ask us: Why? Why all this death? Why all this destruction? War is always an absurdity, war is always a defeat!”
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