Dozens of Palestinians were killed Thursday in another Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering thousands of displaced people in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, and UNICEF said children in the enclave are suffering from food poverty.
The Gaza-based government media office said the Israeli army struck a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in the Nuseirat refugee camp, injuring and killing dozens of people.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital authorities said that the attack killed at least 39 people and injured dozens more. They also added that the death toll could rise significantly as casualties were still reaching the hospital.
The Israeli army, for its part, admitted that it struck an UNRWA school in the Nuseirat refugee camp, claiming that Hamas militants were hiding inside.
Israel has continued its brutal offensive on Gaza since 7 October 2023, despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire.
Since the start of the bloody war in the Gaza Strip, Israeli shelling and shortages of food and medicine have killed nearly 36,600 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
Israel is accused of genocide by the UN International Court of Justice, which in its latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt the operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians were sheltering from the war before it was captured on 6 May.
Children suffer from food poverty
Meanwhile, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said nine out of 10 children in Gaza cannot consume nutrients from enough food groups to ensure their healthy growth and development.
UNICEF said in a statement on Thursday:
“In the Gaza Strip, months of hostilities and restrictions on humanitarian aid have collapsed the food and health systems, resulting in catastrophic consequences for children and their families.”
The report says that according to data collected between December 2023 and April 2024, 9 out of 10 children in the Gaza Strip suffer from severe food poverty, meaning they survive on two or fewer food groups per day.
Children must consume foods from at least five of the eight food groups defined by the food diversity scale used by UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to meet the minimum level of food diversity for healthy development. These food groups include breastfeeding, eggs, dairy products, meat, poultry and fish.
According to UNICEF, 27 per cent of children worldwide suffer from acute nutritional poverty in early childhood, representing 181 million children under the age of five.
Former Greek minister Yanis Varoufakis on X makes brief but succinct comments on events in Gaza:
“Another day, another war crime by Israel. Lest we forget.”
