Israel has killed an average of 100 children every day in its relentless bombing campaign on the besieged Gaza Strip, a Geneva-based rights group says.
In a report released on Tuesday, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory said it had documented the killing of 1,046 Palestinian children by 16 October and the injury of 3,250, including at least 1,240 children who need specialized medical care.
It also noted that 167 children are estimated to be under the rubble of residential buildings destroyed in Israeli aerial assaults.
The Gaza children “suffer the bitterness of pain, loss and the severity of wounds as a result of Israel’s intense attacks on residential neighborhoods and civilian headquarters, in flagrant violation of child protection rules under international and humanitarian law,” it added.
The rights watchdog further described the children of Gaza as the first target of the ongoing “mass slaughter” against Palestinians.
“Children who had survived the killing, have either lost one or both parents, or their homes … They were forced to migrate with their families to escape Israeli attacks, or for fear of forced eviction warnings,” it continued.
Many children in the Gaza Strip, the rights group said, suffered horrific burns, shell wounds and loss of limbs, as well as the psychological impact and terror.
Hundreds of photos and video clips show the “smashing of children’s heads, and shrapnel penetrating small stomachs and hearts, at a time when the scattered rubble of residential buildings destroyed above the heads of their residents,” it said.
‘Women and children make up 70% of Gaza victims’
In a statement on Tuesday, Abdul Latif Al-Qanoua, a spokesman for the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement, said that women and children make up more than 70 percent of the victims of Israeli air raids on Gaza.
The “Israeli criminal occupation” continues its genocidal war against civilians, but it will be defeated, whether the battle is long or short, he added.
Qanoua also stressed that the will of resistance and the Qassam Brigades, Hamas military wing, is stronger than the destructive force of the Israeli occupation.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas waged a surprise attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, against the occupying entity.
The Tel Aviv regime has killed 3,500 Palestinians in its relentless airstrikes. It has also blocked water, food and electricity to the Gaza Strip, plunging the coastal sliver into a humanitarian crisis.
