Five months of violence, displacement, starvation and disease on top of nearly 17 years of a blockade have caused relentless mental harm to children in Gaza, Save the Children said.

“It is unacceptable that any child should contend with the horrors that those in Gaza have lived through. While dodging bombs and bullets, fleeing through streets littered with debris and corpses, being forced to sleep in the open air and going without the basic food and clean water they need to survive, children in Gaza are going through a period of mass-scale shock and grief,” Save the Children’s Country Director for the occupied Palestinian territories said. 

Jason Lee added, “This war and the physical and mental scars it is leaving on children is further eroding their resilience.”

According to Lee, Save the Children is calling for an immediate, definitive ceasefire to save and protect the lives of children in Gaza and effective implementation of the provisional measures from the ICJ.