‘Devastating Levels of Stress’ – UNRWA Warns against Psychological Toll Faced by Gaza Children

Displaced Palestinian children in Rafah. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)

By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

“We have to protect their present and their future,” the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said in a statement.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) warned on Saturday against the psychological toll facing the children in Gaza as a result of Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged Strip.

“Children in Gaza are suffering devastating levels of stress,” the agency said in a statement on X.

“UNRWA team is working with children and adolescents to mitigate the impact of the horrors of war,” it added.

“Our counselors offer them hope and comfort,” the agency said, noting: “We have to protect their present and their future.”

“Ceasefire Now,” UNRWA added.

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In a briefing note last month, UNICEF Communication Specialist Tess Ingram said that “these children have become the faces of the ongoing war.”

“From devastating injuries sustained in airstrikes, to the trauma of being caught in violent clashes, their stories paint a harrowing picture of the human consequences of conflict,” she said.

Staggering Numbers

Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7. 

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 34,654 Palestinians have been killed, and 77,908 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.

Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip. 

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Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.

The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children. 

The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.

Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.

(PC, Anadolu)

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