The United Nations has sounded one of its strongest alarms yet over the escalating Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, branding it a systematic campaign of annihilation that has turned Palestinian childhood into a daily ordeal of death, fear, and starvation.

For nearly two years, Gaza’s children have lived under unrelenting bombardment and blockade. According to UNICEF, this brutal reality has become the defining feature of life under Israeli occupation.

Speaking on behalf of the agency, Amar Ammar, UNICEF’s Regional Chief for Advocacy and Communications in the Middle East and North Africa, highlighted the devastating toll the attacks have inflicted on Gaza’s most vulnerable. Beyond the staggering death toll of tens of thousands, Ammar warned of irreversible psychological trauma that now grips over one million children, threatening their emotional and cognitive development for decades to come.

The situation, he said, is no accident. “This is a deliberate act of deprivation, not a consequence of scarcity,” Ammar declared, pointing to famine conditions engulfing more than half a million people in Gaza. Starvation-related deaths continue to rise as haunting images of skeletal children and dying infants circulate, while the international community looks on in silence.

The humanitarian catastrophe has reached catastrophic proportions. In July alone, over 12,000 cases of acute malnutrition were documented, with nearly one in four children now suffering from its most lethal form. The damage, experts warn, will scar their bodies and minds long after the bombs cease to fall.

Despite UNICEF’s attempts to scale up humanitarian operations, Israeli restrictions and the ongoing blockade continue to choke the delivery of food, medicine, and life-saving aid. Convoys are routinely delayed, obstructed, or looted, leaving hundreds of thousands without access to even the most basic sustenance.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the famine in Gaza as a “manufactured catastrophe, a moral failure, and a collapse of international accountability.” He stressed that this crisis is not the result of natural disaster, but the outcome of deliberate Israeli policies that have dismantled the infrastructure needed for survival.

In a unified appeal, UNICEF, WHO, UNRWA, and other UN agencies renewed their demand for an immediate and lasting ceasefire, unrestricted humanitarian access, and the protection of journalists and medical personnel. They also called for international legal accountability for Israel’s grave violations of international law.

The UN’s humanitarian office confirmed that over 240 journalists have been killed since the onset of what Palestinians describe as a genocide, with many more injured or detained. Meanwhile, food aid remains systematically obstructed, deepening Gaza’s descent into famine.

As Gaza’s children endure what the UN calls “a daily ordeal of terror,” Palestinian voices continue to insist that silence in the face of this atrocity amounts to complicity. (ILKHA)