UN raises alarm as Israel keeps killing mostly women, children in Gaza

Al Jazeera

11-04-2025

The United Nations has warned that the cumulative effect of Israel's actions in Gaza is threatening 'the future viability of Palestinians as a group', as the most recent predawn strike killed at least 10 people, including seven children.
Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, highlighted on Friday 'the death, the destruction, the displacement, the denial of access to basic necessities within Gaza and the repeated suggestion that Gazans should leave the territory entirely'.
Shamdasani pointed in particular to the dire effect of Israel's ongoing air attacks on civilians, lamenting that 'a large percentage of fatalities are children and women.'
She told reporters that Israel had launched about 224 raids on residential buildings and tents housing displaced people between March 18 and April 9.
'In some 36 strikes about which the UN Human Rights Office corroborated information, the fatalities recorded so far were only women and children,' she said.
Shamdasani cited an April 6 strike on a residential building in Deir el-Balah belonging to the Abu Issa family, which reportedly killed one girl, four women and a four-year-old boy.
In the most recent Israeli air attack on Gaza, early dawn on Friday in Khan Younis, at least 10 people in one family were killed, including seven children. At least three other people were killed on Friday in other parts of Gaza.
Many people have been trapped under the rubble across Gaza, according to Al Jazeera's Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from central Gaza's Deir el-Balah.
'We have heard very horrific testimonies from civil defence crews saying that while they were rescuing Palestinians trapped under their destroyed homes, they were hearing the sounds of babies and the sound of children crying for help and shouting for any sort of rescue,' he said.
Israel had resumed intense attacks on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas.
Since then, more than 1,500 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-run territory to which Israel cut off aid more than a month ago.
Even the areas where Palestinians were being instructed to go by the expanding number of Israeli forced displacement orders were subjected to attacks, the rights office spokeswoman said.
The raids across Gaza were 'leaving nowhere safe', she said.
As an example, Shamdasani took the Israeli army's order for civilians to move to the al-Mawasi area of the southern city of Khan Younis.
Despite this 'strikes continued on tents in that area housing displaced people, with at least 23 such incidents recorded by the office since 18 March,' she said.
Shamdasani also referred to a March 31 order by the Israeli military covering all of Rafah, the southernmost governorate in Gaza, followed by a large-scale ground operation.
Israel has said its troops are seizing 'large areas' in Gaza and incorporating them into buffer zones cleared of their inhabitants.
The UN Human Rights office's warning comes as the World Health Organization also warned on Friday that medicine stocks are critically low due to the aid block in Gaza, making it hard to keep hospitals even partially operational.
'We are critically low in our three warehouses, on antibiotics, IV fluids and blood bags,' WHO official Rik Peeperkorn told reporters in Geneva via videolink from Jerusalem.
The supply of clean water for hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents is also becoming scarcer in the past week, after the water utility was cut by the Israeli army's renewed offensive, Palestinian authorities warned.
'We are now living in a real thirst crisis in Gaza City, and we could face a difficult reality in the coming days if the situation remains the same,' said Husni Mhana, the municipality's spokesperson.
Israel's military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since October 7, 2023, at least 50,886 Palestinians have been confirmed dead. The Government Media Office updated its death toll to more than 61,700, saying thousands of people missing under the rubble are presumed dead.