LONDON: More than 340 children in Gaza have been killed and hundreds injured since the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas was announced on Oct. 10, 2026, the UN Children’s Fund, also known as UNICEF, said on Friday.
For those families “mourning the loss of their children, those terrible statistics do not equate with a ceasefire,” Ricardo Pires, a spokesperson for the fund, told reporters in Geneva.
Five boys and two girls have been reported killed and at least 33 children seriously injured in airstrikes, drone strikes and gunfire across Gaza in the past two weeks alone, Pires said. Two other boys died of injuries sustained earlier.
The consequences of the war shape every aspect of children’s lives in Gaza, he added, including “where they sleep, what they eat, whether they can learn.”
About 800,000 children remain displaced by the conflict in the territory, which began in October 2023. Most of them are living in tents or dangerously damaged buildings, UNICEF said. An estimated 60,000 lost one or both parents during the war or since the ceasefire, and nearly every child needs some form of mental health support.
Among those bearing the burdens of the conflict is 16-year-old Norhan, whose mother was shot while eight months pregnant. She gave birth then died the next day, Pires said.
Norhan, whose father is disabled, now cares for her 1-year-old sister, Narjis, cooking, cleaning and playing with her. She also helps her three other siblings with their lessons after they return home from a UNICEF-supported learning center.
Pires warned that the recovery of children depends on an uninterrupted flow of humanitarian aid and commercial goods. Asked about reports that private traders in Gaza had stopped cooperating with Israeli authorities in their efforts to bring in commercial food shipments, he recalled the conditions in Gaza City before the ceasefire, when few supplies were getting in at all and UN-backed food-security experts declared a famine.
“We can’t go back to a situation where children and families are not getting all the supplies, goods and services that they require,” he said.
The warning comes as falling temperatures and the approaching winter rainy season compound the hardships faced by families displaced by three years of war. Some fill empty flour bags with sand in an attempt to keep rainwater out of their tents. Damage to Gaza’s drainage network caused by Israeli bombardments has heightened the risk that sewage-contaminated water will flood residential areas.
Pires said one urgent concern is the Sheikh Radwan stormwater basin, which was already half-full.
“With the winter rains fast approaching, we’re running out of time to pump this out,” he added. The fear is that contaminated water could overflow from basin into nearby neighborhoods, with potentially life-threatening consequences for children and their families, he warned.
“Children have drowned in sewage-contaminated water before,” he added.