Mouood Mouood English Edition
Children in the Gaza Strip are paying the price of the latest Israeli war on the coastal enclave, as many have been left orphaned by the brutal military aggression, Press TV reports.
The Israeli regime launched its war on Gaza on July 8 and later expanded its military campaign with a ground invasion of the Palestinian territory. Over 2,100 Palestinians, including 578 children and nearly 260 women, lost their lives in the attacks and some 11,000 were injured.
The orphaned children are now staying either in an orphanage or with their relatives.
The Israeli aggression on the Palestinian territory, where about half of the 1.8-million population are children under the age of 18, also left thousands of kids traumatized.
“We escaped from our house after it was hit by a rocket. My mother died at once with my cousin. We escaped and met my father and he asked me, ‘where is mommy?’ My uncle told me she is dead. He hugged me and we burst into tears,” a Palestinian girl told Press TV.
The United Nations has estimated that 400,000 Gazan children are in need of psychological care as a result of not just the latest onslaught on the territory but the three previous acts of Israeli military aggression since 2006.
Many of the kids in Gaza suffer from a variety of conditions ranging from nightmares, bed-wetting and behavioral regression to mental anxiety, including an inability to process or verbalize experiences as memories of war still haunt them.
“Until now these children keep asking for their fathers or mothers, waiting for them to come and take them home,” said a kindergarten principal in Gaza.
