Two Palestinian women get killed every hour in the Gaza Strip amid the unrelenting Israeli ground and aerial strikes against the besieged territory, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women says.
“According to UN Women’s estimates, two mothers are killed every hour in Gaza,” the entity, also known as UN Women, said in a statement published on X on Sunday.
It added that “children are losing their only safety line — their parents. This needs to stop.”
UN Women also called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the war-ravaged area.
The United Nations estimates that around 50,000 pregnant women are currently living in Gaza, with more than 180 births taking place every day.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) said in a statement that its doctors and midwives “are doing everything possible to provide care for post-natal and high-risk pregnant women at the seven operational UNRWA health centers.”
Also on Sunday, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) decried the “decimation” of Gaza’s health system, while praising health personnel there for continuing to work under extreme circumstances.
“The decimation of the Gaza health system is a tragedy,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X.
“In the face of constant insecurity and inflows of wounded patients, we see doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and more continue striving to save lives,” he said, reiterating calls for an immediate ceasefire.
The agency warned that even as healthcare needs increase, only 38 percent of pre-conflict hospital beds remained available in the Palestinian territory and only 30 percent of original health staff were still working.
Israel waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of death and destruction in Palestine.
The Israeli aggression has so far killed at least 20,424 Palestinians, most of them women and children. Another 54,036 individuals have been wounded while many bodies remain trapped under rubble.
Around 80 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced to southern Gaza, with tens of thousands crammed in UN schools or taking refuge in makeshift tents.
The Tel Aviv regime has imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
