Key Points
- A new term is being used by Gazan doctors to describe children who arrive at hospitals with no surviving family.
- An Australian with UNICEF says the impact of the war on children in Gaza has been "ghastly".
- Almost 6,000 children have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its post-7 October assault on the enclave.
The number of children in Gaza presenting to hospitals having experienced "atrocious" violence has become so common that a new term has been coined to describe some of them: 'Wounded Child, No Surviving Family'.
UNICEF global spokesperson James Elder says he's seen a number of children in the past few days who have not only sustained major injuries but also lost all members of their immediate family.
Palestinian health authorities say around 14,800 people – almost 6,000 of them children – have been killed after six weeks of an air and ground campaign by Israel following the , which killed 1,200 people in Israel, including an estimated 30 children.
A Palestinian child wounded in an Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip is treated at al-Aqsa Hospital on 21 November. Source: AP / /
Elder said such a pause "must turn to peace" and that the "mass killing of children" would not "bring peace and safety to the region".
"To think that this conflict will continue again at some random point in the next day or three is callous and cold – it would have disastrous consequences for children," he told SBS News.
Elder described seeing a 10-year-old last week at a hospital in southern Gaza with burns to half his body.
"He had these soft blue eyes that were just staring into nowhere until doctors said they also feared he lost his sight," Elder said.
"His uncle whispered to me because he didn't want the boy to hear that the boy's father and brother had also been killed in this attack on their home.
"So this young boy, whose body looked like it had been broken and badly put back together, was not even aware of how bad his world had become."
Elder said "atrocious" stories were "spread across Gaza".
In a separate interview later with BBC News, Elder said he saw a seven-year-old boy who was being treated in a makeshift hospital inside a church in Gaza’s north.
Elder said he asked the boy’s aunt why the child kept closing his eyes.
"She said, 'he's just so terrified he's going to forget what his mum and his dad look like. So he wants to … keep picturing them, not lose them in his mind as much as he’s lost them in real life.'"
Elder told SBS News the war's impact on children in Gaza has been "absolutely ghastly".
"I go to hospitals here and when a mortar or bomb hits a residential building, the children in that building, they don't suffer from one injury … It's broken bones, it's shrapnel, it's eye injuries, it's horrendous burns.
"I don't think I've seen this scale of an attack on children before.
"They are losing quite literally everything."
British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sitta, who was forced to flee the last fully functioning hospital in Gaza City, on Tuesday said that up to 45 per cent of the wounded at al-Shifa hospital were children.
Last month, Abu Sitta described in an interview with CNN the usage of the new term "wounded child with no surviving family" of the children who presented to hospital as new orphans.
On Tuesday, a group of aid agencies including Oxfam Australia, Islamic Relief Australia, ActionAid Australia, Union Aid Abroad and Plan International Australia called on the Australian government to push for a permanent ceasefire.
"A four-day pause allows us to deliver a drop of aid into an ocean of need – it is woefully inadequate given the scale of suffering and destruction in Gaza," Oxfam Australia chief executive Lyn Morgain said.
Israel will only be "secure and free" when Palestinians are, cabinet minister Chris Bowen said on Sunday and said the government hoped the truce would become permanent.
