Ten children per day are losing one or both of their legs in Israel's genocidal war in besieged Gaza, the head of the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees said.
"Basically, we have every day ten children who are losing one leg or two legs on average," UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.
Citing figures from the UN children's agency UNICEF, he said that figure "does not even include the arms and the hands, and we have many more" of these.
"Ten per day, that means around 2,000 children after the more than 260 days of this brutal war," Lazzarini said.
He said amputation often takes place "in quite horrible conditions", sometimes without anaesthesia.
Save the Children said on Monday that up to 21,000 children are estimated to be missing in the chaos of the war. Israel has killed more than 15,000 teens and infants in Gaza so far, according to Palestinian and other credible estimates.
UNRWA coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, but Lazzarini warned the agency was facing relentless attack and a deep funding crisis.
"We have cash until the end of August," he said Tuesday, adding that the agency still had "a shortfall of about $140 million... to bridge the end of the year".
Formally called the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA was established to help the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled by Zionists out of what is now Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israel war surrounding the country's creation.
Their descendants now number nearly six million.
Genocidal war
Israel has killed nearly 37,700 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and wounded over 86,200 others so far in Gaza where some 10,000+ Palestinians are also feared buried under debris of bombed homes.
Israel has also abducted more than 9,500 Palestinians from occupied West Bank and Gaza as opposed to 116 Israeli hostages being held in Gaza by resistance fighters since October 7.
During its nine-month carnage in Gaza, Tel Aviv reduced most of the enclave to ruins, while causing a massive shortage of basic necessities, including water, food, electricity and medicine. The Israeli-caused famine is already starving and killing many Palestinians, especially in the north.
On Tuesday, the UN meanwhile highlighted the continued risks against aid workers, saying: "The risks, frankly, are becoming increasingly intolerable," while pressing Israel for more effective coordination with aid groups.
Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its invasion in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.
