GENEVA: The UN warned on Friday that an Israeli plan to take control of 70 percent of Gaza is sure to increase suffering among children already hit by the impacts of severe overcrowding.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he had ordered the military to take control of more territory in the Gaza Strip, in defiance of the terms of a fragile ceasefire that took effect in October.
He said the military had controlled 50 percent of the territory under the terms of the ceasefire, then advanced to take over 60 percent.
"My directive is to move to... 70 percent," he said.
But the United Nations children's agency warned that such a move would deepen the health crisis among children in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, already suffering from a lack of food, water and access to hygiene.
Even before Hamas's October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel triggered the war in Gaza, it was "already one of the most densely populated places in the world", UNICEF spokesman Salim Oweis told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Gaza.
Today, "people have been crammed into around 40 percent of the space left to them, sheltering among broken buildings, rubble and mounting solid waste", he said, adding "there is no accessible space left to clear" the waste.
"The effects of this are now widely apparent: children with respiratory infections, acute watery diarrhoea, and more than half of all households reporting skin diseases."
Rats biting children
"Fleas, lice and scabies are commonplace," Oweis said, also pointing to numerous cases of rats biting young children and even babies after getting into tents and other shelters for Gaza's hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
Oweis told the story of a woman named Hind, who "hasn't slept since her four-year-old daughter, Masa, was bitten by a rat during the night".
"Like many families, they sheltered wherever they could, in their case, the second floor of a building block where sewage water leaks through the ceilings, and rodents crawl through the cracks in the building and climb the exposed pipes," he said.
"Increasing numbers of children are requiring hospitalisation, all without a single fully functioning hospital across Gaza."
Oweis described the situation as "dire", noting the overcrowding was "creating more spread of diseases, straining the systems and of course cutting... services".
If Israel takes control of even more land, that "means that we will lose access to some of the service points, but also (to) some hard to reach places (where) children and families are living," he said.
"This will just mean that more children will suffer.
"Honestly, we can't afford that at the moment."
Despite an October 10 ceasefire, Gaza remains gripped by daily violence.
Israel has killed more than 900 people in the territory since the ceasefire, according to Gaza's health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.