GENEVA: The UN warned on Friday that an Israeli plan to take control of 70 per cent of Gaza is sure to increase suffering among children already hit by the impacts of severe overcrowding.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he had ordered the military to take control of more territory in the Gaza Strip, in defiance of the terms of a fragile ceasefire that took effect in October.
He said the military had controlled 50 per cent of the territory under the terms of the ceasefire, then advanced to take over 60 per cent.
“My directive is to move to... 70 per cent,” he said.
But the United Nations children´s agency warned that such a move would deepen the health crisis among children in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, already suffering from a lack of food, water and access to hygiene.
Even before Hamas´s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel triggered the war in Gaza, it was “already one of the most densely populated places in the world”, Unicef spokesman Salim Oweis told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Gaza.
Today, “people have been crammed into around 40 per cent of the space left to them, sheltering among broken buildings, rubble and mounting solid waste”, he said, adding “there is no accessible space left to clear” the waste.
“The effects of this are now widely apparent: children with respiratory infections, acute watery diarrhoea, and more than half of all households reporting skin diseases.”
