Nearly 3,000 Palestinian children have lost limbs in Israel’s offensive, doctors in Gaza say. The conflict is creating a generation of traumatized amputees. Thousands of children have lost one or more limbs since the onslaught began. Many are undergoing amputations without anesthetic.
Mutilated by an Israeli drone, Sham is one of thousands of child amputees. Sham was standing near the door, and a piece of shrapnel hit her hand. Her mother ran outside and found her hand hanging by a thread.
Not a single hospital in Gaza fully functions, therefore it took hours before a doctor saw her. Despite the horror of her experience, Sham was one of the luckier ones. Her amputation was performed with an anesthetic.
Meanwhile, torture in Israeli detention centers continues. United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese took to X to decry acts of torture reportedly committed by Israel against Palestinian detainees over the past eight months.
In a ghostly Israeli detention center, reposting screenshots from the media on the treatment of Palestinian detainees describe in striking detail acts of torture and humiliation committed against Palestinian civilians. These included electrocution, forcing detainees to wear diapers, and sodomy.
Francesca Albanese wrote the article citing a leaked UNRWA report draft containing interviews with former detainees. However, abuses, torture, mass killing, and wanton destruction, have been the daily reality for the Palestinians under Israeli rule for over half a century.
Israel operates as a military dictatorship, committing all sorts of crimes including apartheid to the aim of removing the Palestinians from their land. Now everyone can see. On the other hand, at least six people have been killed and several others injured in an Israeli bombing that targeted a house in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its latest situation report on the Palestinian territory between Monday and Friday afternoon, that 252 Palestinians were reported killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and 753 were injured. Intense Israeli air strikes have targeted the Nuseirat, Bureij, and Maghazi refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip, OCHA said.
In Deir el-Balah, a World Food Program warehouse was damaged on Thursday when an Israeli missile hit an adjoining flour mill, forcing the UN’s food agency to temporarily suspend operations at the site, as the children starve. On the same day, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that nine out of 10 children in Gaza are experiencing severe food poverty, and are surviving on two or fewer food groups each day.
OCHA reports military operations in Gaza have significantly destabilized humanitarian aid flows, forcing the UN and its partners to reorganize the entire operation.
Francesca Albanese, the UN’s expert on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, has welcomed Israel being added to the UN’s annual “blacklist” of countries that have committed abuses against children in armed conflict but said the move is long overdue.
Albanese wrote on X it should have not taken 15,000 children killed, many more mutilated 20,000 orphaned to list Israel among the states that commit heinous violations of international law against children.
Benny Gantz Israel’s war cabinet member has said he will hold a press conference, with Israeli media reporting he is likely to announce his departure from the government. He said last month that he would resign from the war cabinet if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not approve a post-conflict plan for the Gaza Strip by June 8.
Gantz’s centrist National Union Party submitted a bill last week to dissolve the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and hold an early election. Gantz said that returning hostages from Gaza was a priority.
