The United Nations Population Fund expressed its horror at reports of Israeli officers stripping Palestinian women and girls in Gaza of their clothes and subjecting them to rape or execution. UN agencies also warned of an “explosion” in the number of child deaths in Gaza.

The Fund added in a post on its account on the X platform that reports indicate that Palestinian women and girls in Gaza have been beaten, arrested, humiliated, raped, or executed by Israeli officers.

The UN Fund stressed that "women and girls are not targets."

Earlier yesterday, UN rapporteurs expressed grave concern over reports of rape and threats of sexual assault by Israeli forces during their arbitrary detention of Palestinian women and girls.

This came in a joint statement signed by United Nations rapporteurs, in which they described the reported human rights violations against women and girls in Palestine, which is subject to siege and intense Israeli attacks, as horrific.

Since the seventh of last October, Israel has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, leaving tens of thousands of victims, most of them children and women, according to Palestinian and UN data, which led to Israel being tried before international justice on charges of genocide for the first time since its founding.

Shocking numbers about the conditions of children

The United Nations also warned on Monday that alarming food shortages, rampant malnutrition, and the rapid spread of diseases are factors that could lead to an “explosion” in the number of child deaths in the Gaza Strip.

United Nations agencies confirmed that food and clean water have become a "very scarce" currency in the besieged Palestinian enclave, and that almost all young children suffer from infectious diseases.

Ted Chaiban, deputy executive director of UNICEF, said Gaza is about to witness “an explosion in preventable child deaths, which could double the already unbearable level of child mortality.”

At least 90% of children under the age of five in Gaza are affected by one or more infectious diseases, according to a report issued by UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the World Food Program.

70% had had diarrhea in the past two weeks, a 23-fold increase compared to 2022.

For his part, Mike Ryan, in charge of emergency situations at the World Health Organization, said that “hunger and disease are a deadly combination,” and that “hungry, weak and severely traumatized children are more vulnerable to disease.”

According to a United Nations assessment, more than 15% of children under the age of two, or one in six, suffer from “acute malnutrition” in northern Gaza, and are almost completely deprived of humanitarian aid.

UN agencies warned that “this data was collected in January, and the current situation is likely to be more serious.”

In the southern Gaza Strip, 5% of children under the age of two suffer from acute malnutrition, according to the assessment.

The UN agencies said that “this deterioration in the nutritional status” of people within 3 months is “unprecedented in the world.”

The death toll from the Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip rose on Monday to more than 29,000 martyrs and about 70,000 wounded since October 7, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

Source: Al Jazeera + Anatolia