Spokesperson for the United Nation's Children's Fund ( ) James Elder affirmed that "Only a ceasefire is going to save the children of Gaza right now," explaining that "This war on children has resumed with a ferocity at scale beyond anything we've seen in the South and certainly at a horrendous power of anything in the North."
Elder said in a statement that there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip, commenting on the news of the Israeli occupation army allocating so-called "safe zones" for civilians in Gaza.
"In the current context of the so-called safe zones, they are not scientific, they are not rational. They are not possible. And I think the authorities are aware of this. I think it's callous. I think it's cold and I think it reinforces the indifference towards children and women in Gaza. And I've seen in hospitals from the South to the North that that indifference is lethal. It's heartbreaking and it's confounding," he added.
"We have the perfect storm for disease outbreak, remembering, of course, in this specific case of Gaza, Israel is the occupying power. It's there, you have to provide food, water, medicines," he said.
"So now, given we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people, right now this minute who are moving somewhere with bombardments at scale, 200 a day yesterday, aerial bombardments as we speak, the only possible way to create safe spaces in Gaza that are truly safe, that protect human life, is for the hell to stop raining down from the sky. Only a ceasefire, only a ceasefire is going to save the children of Gaza right now," Elder explained.
Earlier, the Palestinian Minister of Health Dr. Mai Al Kaila announced that the toll of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, which has been ongoing for 60 consecutive days, reached 16,060 martyrs and about 40,000 Palestinians injured, more than 70% of whom were children and women (more than 6,000 children and about 4,000 women).
