Nowhere safe in Gaza as attacks in north, hospital ablaze in south put the lives of children and families at risk, says Save the Children
Gaza is what can happen without the rules of war as nowhere is safe in the besieged Palestinian enclave where more than 42,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks, Save the Children said on Monday.
Four people were killed and 40 others injured when Israeli warplanes hit a hospital courtyard in the central city of Deir al-Balah, burning 30 tents where people were sleeping early Monday.
It followed the death of 22 people, including 15 children, in another airstrike on a UNRWA school sheltering displaced civilians in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
Images of people trapped in the flames have flooded social media.
"What we're seeing now in Gaza looks like the depths of hell with reports day after day of attacks on children and families. Nowhere is safe," Jeremy Stoner, Middle East regional director for the charity, said in a statement.
Saying that in the north, an already starving population has been cut off from food for two weeks while trying to dodge bombs and bullets in a kill zone they cannot leave, he noted that in the south bombs dropped by Israeli jets have set off a fire that is searing through Al-Aqsa Hospital and tents in the hospital grounds.
"Evacuation orders' are at risk of becoming ‘execution orders' as children are denied the means to survive. What military goals could justify such mass-scale slaughter of civilians," Stoner said.
Stressing that the notion of collateral damage must never be used to excuse the predictable killing of children, Stoner reminded international outcry when Israeli fire damaged Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City.
"How devastatingly far we have descended."
He went on to say that without immediate international action, children and families across the Gaza Strip "face a death sentence – today, tomorrow, in a week, in a month, by bombs, bullets, fire, disease or starvation."
"Gaza is what can happen without the rules of war," Stoner said, adding that humanity "has lost its way" if those with the ability and legal obligation to stop this slaughter choose not to.
