Over 13,000 children killed in Gaza, others severely malnourished: UNICEF

The UN agency says surviving children do not ‘even have the energy to cry’ as famine looms in the besieged enclave being bombarded for months.

Israel has killed more than 13,000 children in Gaza since October 7 while others are suffering from severe malnutrition and do not “even have the energy to cry”, says the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

“Thousands more have been injured or we can’t even determine where they are. They may be stuck under rubble … We haven’t seen that rate of death among children in almost any other conflict in the world,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell told the CBS News network on Sunday.

Russell said there were “very great bureaucratic challenges” moving trucks into Gaza for aid and assistance as famine stalks more than two million Palestinians since Israel’s “genocidal” war began.

Moreover, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), one in three children under the age of two in northern Gaza is now acutely malnourished. The agency also warned that famine is looming in the besieged enclave facing relentless Israeli bombing for more than five months.

International criticism has mounted on Israel due to the death toll of the war, the starvation crisis in Gaza, and allegations of blocking aid deliveries into the enclave.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his threat of a ground assault on Rafah, the town bordering Egypt where more than a million Palestinians have taken refuge.