Kazem Abu Khalaf, spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), revealed the suffering of children who lost their parents in the Gaza Strip, whom he called “unaccompanied children”.
Abu Khalaf indicated that the number of unaccompanied children in Gaza is an estimated number “because we cannot accurately determine the numbers, and from our experience as an institution working in war and conflict zones in the world, out of the total number there is a percentage of 1 percent unaccompanied children whose father or mother may be alive or orphans”.
He confirmed that there are 1.9 million displaced people in Gaza, and therefore the estimated number is 19,000 unaccompanied children who may be orphans or whose parents were separated from them in the war. The estimates and are measured by experience in conflict zones, and they are less than 1 percent of the total number of displaced people.
The UNICEF spokesperson revealed details of the organisation’s efforts to reunite a family separated in war, saying: “We were able to reunite one of the children with his parents, as his father and mother had fled to Al-Shifa Hospital for fear of bombing, then military operations took place in Al-Shifa, so the men were taken out of the hospital, and the father found himself in the south and Al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip.”
He added: “The woman was about to give birth, and indeed she gave birth, and after 10 months the father was reunited with his family, and it was the first time the father saw his son, and the infant was 10 months old at the time.”
The figures published by UNICEF reflect the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, which requires the international community to work seriously to stop the Israeli aggression on the Strip, protect the rights of Palestinian children, and ensure their safety at all times, in accordance with humanitarian and international laws and principles.
Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli occupation forces continued a war of genocide on the Gaza Strip, which has led to a catastrophic deterioration of the humanitarian and health conditions, due to the continuous bombing and the tight siege that prevents the arrival of basic supplies of food, water, medicine and electricity.
