UNICEF calls Gaza mass displacement 'inhumane, deadly threat'

GENEVA

The forced displacement of families from Gaza City is "inhumane" for the most vulnerable as they are being pushed from one "hellscape" to another, a UNICEF official said Tuesday.

"It is inhumane to expect nearly half a million children battered and traumatized by over 700 days of unrelenting conflict to flee one hellscape to end up in another," Tess Ingram, the UNICEF communication manager for the Middle East, told a UN press briefing in Geneva.

Her remarks came as the Israeli military stepped up its ground offensive in Gaza City, ordering residents to leave the area.

She recalled meeting Isra, a mother of five whose two youngest children walked barefoot as the family walked more than six hours from Gaza City to the south, pushing a trailer of belongings.

"They were walking into the unknown, with little hope of finding solace," she added.

Displaced families are being directed into a so-called humanitarian zone in Al-Mawasi and surrounding areas, which Ingram called "a sea of makeshift tents, human despair and insufficient supplies."

At the same time, malnutrition is surging. UNICEF estimates 26,000 children in Gaza require treatment for acute malnutrition, including more than 10,000 in Gaza City alone.

"In August, more than one in eight children screened across the strip were acutely malnourished, the highest level we've ever recorded," she said, adding that in Gaza City the figure was one in five.

But as needs escalate, services are collapsing. Sixteen nutrition centers shut this week due to evacuation orders and military escalation, cutting off a third of the remaining treatment sites, she noted.

Gaza City endured one of its bloodiest nights on Monday, with 35 people killed and dozens wounded or missing as Israeli forces also deployed explosive-laden robots to demolish homes.

Since October 2023, the Israeli army has killed almost 65,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza. The relentless bombardment has rendered the enclave uninhabitable and triggered widespread starvation and disease.