Report claims 2,000 children killed in Gaza, as death toll reaches 5,000

GAZA – Aid agencies are calling for a ceasefire in Gaza as doctors warn an Israeli blockade on fuel means many more vulnerable babies and wounded people in hospitals will soon die.

CNN news reported that one agency alleged that at least 2,000 children in Gaza have been killed in the past few weeks.

Israel has intensified its bombing campaign in the besieged strip as its Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, said Monday the country is preparing for a “multilateral operation” on the militant group Hamas that controls Gaza from the “air, ground, and sea.”

Israel’s leadership had vowed to wipe out Hamas in response to its October 7 deadly terror attacks and kidnap rampage in which 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed and more than 200 taken hostage.

On Monday, Hamas freed two Israeli citizens – both elderly women – amid growing international pressure to secure the release of the rest of those abducted and taken to Gaza.

Inside Gaza, cut off from the world by a near total blockade, Israeli airstrikes have decimated entire neighbourhoods, levelling homes, schools and mosques.

CNN drone footage from Monday showed the level of destruction across parts of the strip, with whole streets flattened in the al-Rimal neighbourhood in Gaza City and a row of destroyed buildings known as al-Zahra towers in central Gaza.

Save the Children said Monday that over 1 million children are “trapped” in Gaza with no safe place to go and warned of the devastating impacts of lacking medication and electricity to power vital health infrastructure in the enclave.

“At least 2,000 children have been killed in Gaza over the past 17 days, and a further 27 killed in the West Bank,” the aid agency said on Monday.

We call on all parties to take immediate steps to protect the lives of children, and on the international community to support those efforts,” Save the Children said, adding that Israeli airstrikes were “killing and injuring children indiscriminately.”

Latest figures from the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said the death toll resulting from Israeli strikes on the strip has reached at least 5,087, including 2,055 children.

“The health system [in Gaza] has reached the worst stage in its history,” said health ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qudra in a statement early Tuesday.

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