GENEVA: More than 10,000 children need treatment for acute malnutrition in Gaza City, where the Israeli army launched a major ground offensive on Tuesday, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported.
“The forced and massive displacement of families from Gaza City is a deadly threat to the most vulnerable,” said Tess Ingram, a UNICEF spokeswoman in southern Gaza’s Al-Mawasi zone.
Speaking to journalists at a televised UN press briefing in Geneva, Ingram warned of worsening rates of child malnutrition.
“We estimate that 26,000 children in the Gaza Strip currently require treatment for acute malnutrition, including more than 10,000 in Gaza City alone,” she said.
She explained that in August, more than one in eight children examined in the Gaza Strip suffered from acute malnutrition, “the highest level ever recorded.”
In Gaza City, that figure was one in five.
Nutrition centers in Gaza City have been “forced to shut this week due to evacuation orders and the military escalation,” Ingram added.
The Israeli army claims those evacuating southward to the Al-Masawi area will find food, tents, and medicine.
However, nearly two years into the war, Israel has frequently bombed so-called “humanitarian zones” in the Gaza Strip, claiming to target Hamas fighters there.
“It is inhumane to expect nearly half a million children, battered and traumatized by over 700 days of unrelenting conflict, to flee one hellscape to end up in another,” Ingram noted.
About 40 percent of the population of Gaza City and surrounding areas, estimated at one million by the UN, has been displaced, according to an Israeli military official.
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the details provided by the various parties.
Around 150,000 people have fled Gaza City to the south since August 14, Ingram said.
According to UNICEF’s team on the ground, people are still moving “inside and around” Gaza City, unable to seek refuge elsewhere.
The October 2023 attack by Hamas militants resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed at least 64,964 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
UN says over 10,000 children with acute malnutrition in Gaza City
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UN says over 10,000 children with acute malnutrition in Gaza City
- Israel has frequently bombed so-called “humanitarian zones” in Gaza, claiming to target Hamas fighters there
- Around 150,000 people have fled Gaza City to the south since August 14, a UNICEF spokeswoman said
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
- Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade
DAMASCUS: The UN refugee agency said Sunday that a large number of residents of a camp housing family members of suspected Daesh group militants have left and the Syrian government plans to relocate those who remain.
Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCR’s representative in Syria, said in a statement that the agency “has observed a significant decrease in the number of residents in Al-Hol camp in recent weeks.”
“Syrian authorities have informed UNHCR of their plan to relocate the remaining families to Akhtarin camp in Aleppo Governorate (province) and have requested UNHCR’s support to assist the population in the new camp, which we stand ready to provide,” he said.
He added that UNHCR “will continue to support the return and reintegration of Syrians who have departed Al-Hol, as well as those who remain.”
The statement did not say how residents had left the camp or how many remain. Many families are believed to have escaped either during the chaos when government forces captured the camp from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces last month or afterward.
There was no immediate statement from the Syrian government and a government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
At its peak after the defeat of IS in Syria in 2019, around 73,000 people were living at Al-Hol. Since then, the number has declined with some countries repatriating their citizens. The camp’s residents are mostly children and women, including many wives or widows of IS members.
The camp’s residents are not technically prisoners and most have not been accused of crimes, but they have been held in de facto detention at the heavily guarded facility.
Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade. A ceasefire deal has since ended the fighting.
Separately, thousands of accused IS militants who were held in detention centers in northeastern Syria have been transferred to Iraq to stand trial under an agreement with the US
The US military said Friday that it had completed the transfer of more than 5,700 adult male IS suspects from detention facilities in Syria to Iraqi custody.
Iraq’s National Center for International Judicial Cooperation said a total of 5,704 suspects from 61 countries who were affiliated with IS — most of them Syrian and Iraqi — were transferred from prisons in Syria. They are now being interrogated in Iraq.
