'Clock ticking' for children in Gaza, warns UNRWA chief

Israel's war has killed 14,500 children in the Palestinian territory, according to Unicef

Food for children is prepared over a fire made of paper and cardboard scraps outside tents in Khan Younis. AP

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The "clock is ticking" for the children of Gaza as the war continues amid stalled ceasefire negotiations, the Commissioner General of the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarini warned on Monday.

"Since the beginning of the war, 14,500 children have been reported killed in Gaza," he wrote on X, citing figures from Unicef. "One child gets killed every hour. These are not numbers. These are lives cut short. Killing children cannot be justified."

Even if Israel's war on Hamas in Gaza is brought to a close in a ceasefire, the children of the strip will be left to grapple with a future in an enclave where the majority of buildings have been destroyed.

"Those who survive are scarred physically and emotionally," Mr Lazzarini said. "Deprived of learning, boys [and] girls in Gaza sift through the rubble. The clock is ticking for these children. They are losing their lives, their futures [and] mostly their hope."

Mr Lazzarini's call for humanity came as more civilians were killed on Monday in an escalation of airstrikes across the strip, even as rumours spread that a ceasefire deal between Israel and militant group Hamas was 'closer than ever".

The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported three people were killed in a bombing on the northern Shujaiya area, as well as 19 more strikes on areas including Rafah and Khan Younis.

Israel issued eviction orders for yet more areas of Gaza on Monday, including Shejaiya, even as the UN estimates 80.5 per cent of the Gaza Strip is already under active Israeli-issued eviction orders.

People in the Kamal Adwan Hospital, in Gaza's besieged north, were also issued eviction orders, patients and Ministry of Health officials told The National, but the hospital's director said moving patients to other hospitals was almost impossible due to a lack of ambulances.

The area has received very little aid since October, with Oxfam claiming only 12 lorries of food and water have been distributed in northern Gaza in two and a half months.

"Of the meagre 34 trucks of food and water given permission to enter the North Gaza Governorate over the last 2.5 months, deliberate delays and systematic obstructions by the Israeli military meant that just 12 managed to distribute aid to starving Palestinian civilians," Oxfam said in a statement, in a count that included deliveries up until Saturday.

"For three of these, once the food and water had been delivered to the school where people were sheltering, it was then cleared and shelled within hours."

Israel, which has tightly controlled aid entering the Hamas-ruled territory since the outbreak of the war, often blames what it says is the inability of relief organisations to handle and distribute large quantities of aid.

Cogat, the Israeli Defence Ministry body co-ordinating Palestinian civilian affairs, disputed the Oxfam report.

"Since October, over 2,100 aid trucks have entered the northern Gaza Strip," it said, adding that specific shipments "including food, water and medical supplies" had been sent to the areas of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia and Jabalia in northern Gaza.