The head of the UN's children’s agency, UNICEF, has told the UN there are "rampant grave violations being committed against children" as violence escalates in the Middle East.
"We firmly believe that the true cost of this latest escalation will be measured in children’s lives," Catherine Russell told the UN Security Council, "those lost to the violence and those forever changed by it," she said.
"More than 420 children are being killed or injured each day in Gaza, a number that should shake each of us to our core."
The UN Security Council is meeting again today to discuss the deepening crisis in the Middle East.
The session has been called at the request of a non-permanent member, the United Arab Emirates - the only Arab state on the 15-member body - in response to Israel’s ground operations in Gaza over the weekend.
It comes after the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Friday for a humanitarian truce, and after the Security Council had previously failed to achieve any consensus.
Since the 7 October Hamas attacks and Israel’s retaliatory aerial bombardment of Gaza, four separate resolutions have been rejected by the UN’s most senior decision-making body.
Russia, China and the United States used their vetoes to block the drafts, exposing the superpower divisions that have deadlocked the Council since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Today’s meeting will be an attempt to thrash out areas of agreement amongst the world’s most powerful states. But a fifth resolution on the crisis is yet to be presented.
Israel has rejected growing calls for a ceasefire, which Israel’s prime minister said would amount to "surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism, to surrender to barbarism."
Speaking at a news conference earlier today, Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters that "the Bible says that there is a time for peace and a time for war,"
"This is a time for war," he said.
The head of the UN agency supporting Palestine refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, also briefed the Security Council via video link.
"Save the Children reported yesterday that nearly 3,200 children were killed in Gaza in just three weeks," Mr Lazzarini told the Council.
"This surpasses the number of children killed annually across the world's conflict zones since 2019," he said.
"This cannot be "collateral damage," he added.
He described UNRWA as "the last remaining lifeline for the Palestinian people in Gaza," as basic supplies of water, food, medical equipment and fuel are running out.
The UN estimates that 1.4 million people have been displaced in Gaza including more than 670,000 people staying in 150 UNRWA facilities.
There are 50,000 pregnant women without basic services according to UN figures.
According to the Hamas-run Palestinian Ministry of Health, more than 8,300 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including over 3,400 children and 6,300 children have been injured.
Earlier, the Council met to discuss the ongoing conflict in Syria. In his briefing, the UN’s Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pederson, said that spillover of the events in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories had already begun.
"With the wider region at its most dangerous and tense in a very long time, fuel is being added to a tinderbox that was already beginning to ignite," Mr Pederson told ambassadors.
"Even before the regional developments, Syria was seeing the worst surge in violence in more than three year," he said.
