Gaza city clinic sees 100 percent rate of child admission in 24 hours: NGO

Children in Palestine's Gaza are increasingly at risk as the besieged enclave enters a sixth straight day under Israel’s bombardment, which has killed over 1,200 Palestinians and injured at least 5,600, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

On Wednesday, Doctors Without Borders said 100 percent of their patients were children.

"Today, all of the patients we received at our clinic in Gaza City were children between 10 and 14," Ayman Al-Djaroucha, deputy project coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, told the Business Insider.

"This is because the majority of the injured in Gaza are women and children, since they are the ones who are most often in the houses that get destroyed in the airstrikes."

With a population of about 2.3 million Palestinians living on some 365 square kilometers, Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on earth. Half of its population are children, due to the low life expectancy in the enclave - a result of Israel’s suffocating 16-year long blockade.

On Tuesday, four days into Israel’s attack on Gaza, authorities said Israeli warplanes had destroyed at least 159 residential units across the enclave.

Israeli forces launched the attack on Gaza after Hamas fighters breached Israel’s high-tech security fence on Saturday morning while launching thousands of rockets into the country’s south and raiding dozens of Israeli settlements close to Gaza.

Senior Hamas officials said the attack was launched in reponse to Israel’s desecration of Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem and for increased state-sanctioned Israeli settler violence across occupied Palestinian territory.

The number of people killed in Israel has risen to 1,300, with more than 3,300 injured.

Deteriorating mental health in Gaza

Following Hamas’ attack, Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz said electricity, water and fuel supplies will be cut off from entering Gaza, leaving doctors and medical staff with a quickly vanishing supply of medicine and medical equipment to treat thousands of injured people entering hospitals across Gaza.

Spokesperson for Doctors Without Borders Brienne Prusak said: "We're seeing shortages of water, electricity, fuel and essential medical supplies in hospitals, and our emergency stocks on the ground are limited and will run out quickly if we can't bring in medical equipment and medicines."

For many Palestinians in Gaza, the ongoing conflict is the fifth war they have witnessed. In June last year, Save the Children foundation reported that four out of five children in Gaza say they are living with depression, grief and fear under Israel’s brutal blockade.

As fighting continues on both sides, Israel has vowed to increase the severity of its attack on Gaza, with Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant saying on Wednesday: “We started the offensive from the air, later on we will also come from the ground. We’ve been controlling the area since day two and we are on the offensive. It will only intensify.”