Some 600,000 children crammed into Gaza’s Rafah city face “further catastrophe,” UNICEF has warned, advising against their forced relocation after Israel ordered an evacuation ahead of its long-awaited ground invasion.
“Given the high concentration of children in Rafah, UNICEF is warning of a further catastrophe for children, with military operations resulting in very high civilian casualties and the few remaining basic services and infrastructure they need to survive being totally destroyed,” the United Nations children’s agency said in a statement.
It stated that Gaza’s youth were already “on the edge of survival,” with many in Rafah where the population has risen to 1.2 million people, half of whom are minors having already been relocated many times and having nowhere else to go.
“More than 200 days of war have taken an unimaginable toll on the lives of children,” said UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell.
“Rafah is now a city of children, who have nowhere safe to go in Gaza,” she said, warning that a large-scale military operation by Israel would bring “chaos and panic, and at a time where (children’s) physical and mental states are already weakened.”
UNICEF believes that Rafah’s population has grown to nearly five times its average size of 250,000 people.
The organization reiterated its call for a ceasefire and safe access for humanitarian groups, pointing out that there are around 78,000 infants under the age of two sheltering in the city, as well as 175,000 children under the age of five who are infected.
