Director General of World Health Organization (WHO) Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has told the UN Security Council that on average in Gaza a child is killed every ten minutes.
Dr Tedros was briefing the Council in a meeting called by the non-permanent member, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The WHO chief reiterated calls for an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian access to deliver aid to civilians who, he said, "are not responsible for this violence but are suffering in ways that we in this room cannot imagine."
"As we speak," he said, "there are reports of firing outside the Al-Shifa and Rantisi hospitals."
Dr Tedros said half of Gaza's 36 hospitals and two-thirds of its primary health care centres were not functioning at all.
He told Council members that he understood what the children of Gaza were going through because he went through the same thing as a child.
"The sound of gunfire and shells whistling through the air, the smell of smoke after they struck, tracer bullets in the night sky, the fear, the pain, the loss," he told Council members.
"These things have stayed with me throughout my life," he said.
He criticised the Security Council over its failure to act and said it must reform.
Four separate resolutions on the Israel-Gaza conflict have so far failed to be adopted by the 15-member body.
In his address, Palestinian envoy to the United Nations Riyad Mansour said he counted Council meetings in deaths of Palestinian children.
He told the Council that in these halls you could hear the shouts of children under the rubble, "abandoned by humanity."
Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan addressed the Council wearing a yellow Star of David with the words "never again" in the middle.
He told the Security Council that Hamas had turned "every inch of Gaza into a terror trap," including schools and hospitals.
He criticised the UN for repeating lies "spoon-fed" by Hamas.
US Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood said that "we must not look away from the pain and suffering of innocent Palestinians."
"We cannot go back to the way things were before October 7th, either in Gaza or in the West Bank," he said, quoting US President Joe Biden.
