WASHINGTON: The UN children’s agency said on Sunday over 13,000 children have been killed in Gaza in Israel’s offensive, adding many kids were suffering from severe malnutrition and did not “even have the energy to cry.”
“Thousands more have been injured or we can’t even determine where they are. They may be stuck under rubble ... We haven’t seen that rate of death among children in almost any other conflict in the world,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” program on Sunday.
“I’ve been in wards of children who are suffering from severe anemia malnutrition, the whole ward is absolutely quiet. Because the children, the babies ... don’t even have the energy to cry.”
Russell said there were “very great bureaucratic challenges” moving trucks into Gaza for aid and assistance.
International criticism has mounted on Israel due to the death toll of the war, the starvation crisis in Gaza, and allegations of blocking aid deliveries into the enclave.
A UN expert said earlier this month that Israel was destroying Gaza’s food system as part of a broader “starvation campaign.” Israel rejected the accusation.
Israel’s military assault on Hamas-governed Gaza has displaced nearly its entire 2.3 million-person population, caused a starvation crisis, flattened most of the enclave, and killed over 31,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry. It has also led to accusations of genocide being probed in the World Court.
Israel denies the genocide charges and says it is acting in self defense after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel from Hamas that killed some 1,200, according to Israeli tallies, and took scores of hostages.
One in three children under age 2 in northern Gaza is now acutely malnourished and famine is looming, the main UN agency operating in the Palestinian enclave said on Saturday.
UNICEF says over 13,000 children killed in Gaza in Israel offensive
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UNICEF says over 13,000 children killed in Gaza in Israel offensive
- “Thousands more have been injured or we can’t even determine where they are," Russell said
US lawmakers press Israel to probe strike on reporters in Lebanon
- “The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said
- Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured
WASHINGTON: Several Democratic lawmakers called Thursday for the Israeli and US governments to fully investigate a deadly 2023 attack by the Israeli military on journalists in southern Lebanon.
The October 13, 2023 airstrike killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded six other reporters, including two from AFP — video journalist Dylan Collins and photographer Christina Assi, who lost her leg.
“We expect the Israeli government to conduct an investigation that meets the international standards and to hold accountable those people who did this,” Senator Peter Welch told a news conference, with Collins by his side.
The lawmaker from Collins’s home state of Vermont said he had been pushing for answers for two years, first from the administration of Democratic president Joe Biden and now from the Republican White House of Donald Trump.
The Israeli government has “stonewalled at every single turn,” Welch added.
“With the Israeli government, we have been extremely patient, and we have done everything we reasonably can to obtain answers and accountability,” he said.
“The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said, referring to the Israeli military, adding that it has told his office its investigation into the incident is closed.
Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured.
“But I’d also like them to put pressure on their greatest ally in the Middle East, the Israeli government, to bring the perpetrators to account,” he said, echoing the lawmakers who called the attack a “war crime.”
“We’re not letting it go,” Vermont congresswoman Becca Balint said. “It doesn’t matter how long they stonewall us.”
AFP conducted an independent investigation which concluded that two Israeli 120mm tank shells were fired from the Jordeikh area in Israel.
The findings were corroborated by other international probes, including investigations conducted by Reuters, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.
Unlike Welch’s assertion Thursday that the Israeli probe was over, the IDF told AFP in October that “findings regarding the event have not yet been concluded.”
