Nadine Osman

London (The Muslim News): More civilians have been killed by Israel’s month-long aerial bombing of the Gaza Strip than from the continuing, 20-month-old Russia-Ukraine conflict, according to analysis by Anadolu Agency. Furthermore, Save The Children reported that more Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza in the last three weeks than have died in conflicts worldwide in the previous three years.

Israeli attacks in the besieged Palestinian enclave have so far killed 10,022 Palestinians, including 4,104 children and 2,641 women, wounding at least 24,000 people.

In the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, Israeli forces and Jewish settlers have killed 155 Palestinians over the past 31 days.

As of October 8, 9,806 civilians had perished in Ukraine since the war with Russia began on February 24, 2022.

This demonstrates the severity of Israel’s attack by demonstrating that in the past month, more civilians died in Gaza than in Ukraine during a 20-fold span.

Over 40% of the 7,028 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks since October 7 were children, according to figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO).

On Monday, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reported that Israeli attacks have killed a Palestinian child every 10 minutes on average over the past month in Gaza.

“On average, a child is killed and two are injured every 10 minutes during the war,” the UNRWA said in a statement published on X.

“Protecting civilians in times of conflict is not an aspiration or an ideal; it is an obligation and a commitment to our shared humanity,” it added.

UNRWA is the primary UN agency operating in the Gaza Strip, where its schools currently host some 670,000 displaced Palestinians seeking refuge from unrelenting Israeli attacks. The aid agency has lost at least 70 of its staff workers since the attacks began.

Israel has launched air and ground raids on the Gaza Strip following a cross-border attack by Hamas on October 7.

The number of children killed in Palestine in the previous three weeks has surpassed the number of children killed in conflicts globally in the last three years, according to the UK-based NGO Save the Children.

Western leaders have consistently denounced and sanctioned Moscow for its indiscriminate killing since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in sharp contrast to the reaction to Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.

[Photo: Palestinian child injured by Israeli airstrike on the Maslah family being carried in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on 7 11 23.
Photojournalist Ashraf Amra /AA]