“Child casualties in Gaza are tragic, so children’s future is at stake,” Philippe Lazzarini, General Commissioner of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), wrote on X.

More than half a million children do not attend the primary and secondary school system in Gaza; every day of war deepens the scars and endangers a lost generation vulnerable to exploitation, Lazzarini stressed.

The UN general commissioner denounced that “children (in the enclave) are being robbed of their childhood.”

UNRWA has come under fire after Benjamin Netanyahu’s Government indicted 12 of its 13,000 employees for alleged involvement in the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) operation on October 7, 2023.

There is no justification for the collective punishment of more than half a million Palestinian children who receive education in its schools, including some 250,000 in the Gaza Strip only, and some 900,000 who receive food aid in the coastal enclave, he stressed.

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