A 12-year-old Palestinian girl, Nadine Abdul Latif, cannot believe she is alive after Israel struck her home in an airstrike in Gaza City, as U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said that 40% of all those killed by Israeli strikes are children.
Little Nadine is now taking shelter at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza after the destruction of her home in the attack.
"I'm scared and terrified," the Palestinian girl told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Wednesday.
Nadine's cousins were injured in the Israeli bombardment.
"We miraculously survived the attack, but we live in fear," she said.
Israel has launched a massive bombardment campaign on the Gaza Strip following a cross-border attack by Hamas into Israeli territory on Oct. 7.
More than 7,900 people have been killed in the conflict, including at least 6,546 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis.
Gaza's 2.3 million people have been running out of food, water, medicines and fuel, and aid convoys allowed into Gaza have carried only a fraction of what is needed.
"We want to live like any other people," Abdul Latif said.
"We are tired, we want our rights, we want to live like other children around the world," the child said. "This is not a life; there is no safe place, not even in churches, not in mosques and not in hospitals."
Meanwhile, the United Nations reported that 40% of those who have been killed in Gaza by Israeli bombardment since Oct. 7 were children.
U.N. Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese gave information to the press about the report she submitted to the General Assembly on Palestinian children at the U.N. headquarters in New York.
Albanese said: "The continuous bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces has already caused the deaths of 5,700 people, an estimated five times more (than Israeli casualties), and 40% of them were children. Are we aware of what is happening? There are 15,000 seriously injured." The current death toll in Gaza has surpassed 6,500 as of Wednesday evening.
The U.N. special rapporteur stated that 1.6 million Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza since Oct. 7, when the clashes between Israel and Palestine resumed, and that these people do not have access to water, food, electricity and medicine.
"The trauma and devastation are indescribable. The hell the people of Gaza are in right now is a stain on all of us, on all U.N. member states, especially those who had the power to stop it and did not," Albanese said.
Albanese said that as a result of the bombardment carried out by Israel on Tuesday, the Palestinian people experienced "one of the deadliest days in their history."
"A boy from Rafa told me this morning that last night was the worst night of his life, that hundreds of people were killed in his area," Albanese said.
"I condemn the violence sparked by anger that Israel initiated against the people of Gaza." Albanese noted that it was "unlawful" to punish all Palestinians in the region "for what Hamas and possibly others have done."
"My report focused on the generational impact of the Israeli settler colonial occupation on children in the occupied Palestinian territories, what remains of their right to live in safety and dignity," said the U.N. special rapporteur.
Albanese stated that from 2008 to Oct. 7, 1,534 Palestinian children were killed and 32,175 were injured as a result of Israeli attacks, while only 25 Israeli children were killed and 524 were injured in counterattacks in the same period.
Albanese also noted that "13,000 Palestinian children have been arrested, interrogated and brutally detained by Israeli forces since 2000."
Palestinian children ask her, "Why are we less human? Are we less valuable?"
"Recently, an Israeli occupation lieutenant said that the number of Palestinian children accidentally killed during operations aimed at eliminating terrorists was insignificant. We should also remember a statement he made portraying Palestinian children and their parents as terrorists and claiming that human shields are very common in Israel."
Gaza's Government Media Office said Wednesday that around 70% of the territory's 2.3 million population have fled their homes due to the ongoing Israeli airstrikes and siege amid harsh living conditions.
U.N. chief Antonio Guterres has called for an "immediate humanitarian cease-fire" in Gaza to ease the "epic human suffering."
