A man holds one of the injured children of Palestinian cameraman Mohammed Alaloul following an Israeli strike on the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in Deir Balah in the central Gaza Strip, at the al-Quds hospital in the same city on November 5, 2023. Photo by MAHMUD HAMS / AFP
Nearly half of the dead in Gaza are kids and those who’ve survived are struggling physically and psychologically to survive, the UN’s children agency says.
“The situation is catastrophic for children across the Gaza Strip,” UNICEF spokesman Toby Fricker told Al Jazeera.
Fricker said the four-year-old daughter of one UN staffer is suffering mental health problems, pulling out her hair and scratching her legs until they bleed because of the “massive stress of living through this every day”.
More than 4,000 children have been killed out of the Gaza death toll nearing 10,000. Of the 2,600 Palestinians reported missing in the debris from air strikes, about 1,270 are kids, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
