The UN’s annual report on Children in Armed Conflict, a copy of which was obtained by the Associated Press (AP) news agency on Tuesday, provides details on why the Israeli military for the first time has been placed on a blacklist of countries that have killed and maimed children and attacked schools and hospitals.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres chief said in the report that he was “appalled by the dramatic increase and unprecedented scale and intensity of grave violations against children in the Gaza Strip, Israel and the occupied West Bank, including East Al-Quds.”
The magnitude of the Israeli war campaign against Hamas and Islamic Jihad “and the scope of death and destruction in the Gaza Strip have been unprecedented”, he said.
In 2023, the report said, 5,698 grave violations against children were attributed to Israeli forces, 58 to unidentified perpetrators, 51 to Israeli settlers. The process of verifying the attribution of 2,051 other violations is ongoing.
The report said the UN has verified the killing of 2,267 Palestinian children in Gaza among some 9,100 children that have been reported killed in the territory “and verification is ongoing”.
MNA/PR