Image of the aftermath of Gaza bombardments via UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spokesperson James Elder on X
Al Jazeera reports that in his latest update on December 4, Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, says at least 15,899 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7.
Here’s what else Ashraf al-Qudra had to say:
Seventy percent of the victims of Israeli attacks are women and children.
The number of injured has risen to 42,000 since the start of the war.
The continued brutal Israeli aggression has completely incapacitated the health system in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces are still detaining 35 medical personnel, including the director-general of al-Shifa Hospital Muhammad Abu Salmiya, under very harsh conditions.
We call on the United Nations and the World Health Organization to pressure for the release of our teams from occupation prisons.
We demand that a safe passage be provided for the entry of medical supplies and fuel and the exit of the wounded.
We demand the protection of hospitals, health and humanitarian teams.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said on Sunday, December 3:
As a result of Israel’s conduct of hostilities and its orders for people to leave the north and parts of the south, hundreds of thousands are being confined into ever smaller areas in southern Gaza without proper sanitation, access to sufficient food, water and health supplies, even as bombs rain down around them. There is no safe place in Gaza.
More than 6,600 Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7, the government’s media office says.
Thousands more are missing under the rubble from relentless bombardment, it added.
They further report that In the occupied West Bank, 66 Palestinian children have been killed since October 7, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine.
“Israeli forces have killed three times as many Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank this year compared to last year, and there’s still a month to go,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability director at DCIP.
“Israeli forces are increasingly targeting Palestinian children with live ammunition despite the overwhelming majority of Palestinian children posing no threat to Israeli forces when they were killed.”
In a social media post UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spokesperson James Elder "railed against “the endless killing of children” after a night of “utterly relentless bombardments”.
Speaking from inside a shelter, the UN official turned his mobile phone camera to Khaled and Hannah, two infants sleeping side by side. “Please meet them and see them, pray that they’ll be alive in a few days’ time, “he said. “I feel like I’m running out of ways to describe the endless killing of children here.”