GAZA: UN agencies sounded the alarm about war-torn Gaza on Tuesday, saying that 10 children a day are losing one or both legs and half a million Palestinians suffer “catastrophic” hunger. There was no let-up in the Zionist entity’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip and fighting against the Palestinian group Hamas, as it maintained the siege on the territory’s 2.4 million people. Two Zionist airstrikes hit two schools in Gaza City, killing at least 14 people, medics said.

Palestinian officials said another strike killed 10 members of Qatar-based Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh’s family, including his sister. The civil defense agency in Gaza said the strike hit the family’s house in the northern Al-Shati refugee camp, leaving some bodies trapped under the rubble. Civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Basal told AFP: “There are 10 martyrs and several wounded as a result of the strike, including Zahr Haniyeh, sister of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh.”

Hassan Kaskin, a neighbor, said the Haniyeh family house was hit without advance warning before dawn on Tuesday. Footage obtained by Reuters showed the multi-floor building reduced to rubble. “They were 10 individuals, three of them were scattered outside the house and seven under the rubble - with no prior warning, with people around them, and there are injuries among the neighbors,” Kaskin told Reuters.

Haniyeh lost three sons and four grandchildren in a strike in April, when the Zionist military accused them of “terrorist activities”. At the time, the Hamas chief said about 60 of his relatives had died in the Gaza war. The strike came three days after Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the “intense phase” of the war was winding down, but that the war would continue. He also said some forces would be redeployed for “defensive purposes” to the northern border with Lebanon, where fears of a major war against Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah have grown after months of cross-border fire.

The Zionist offensive in Gaza has killed at least 37,658 people, mostly women and children. An AFP correspondent witnessed a strike that killed five people, including two children, near Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, leaving the corpses scattered in a pool of blood.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, in a briefing in Geneva warned of the war’s dire impact on children in Gaza. “Basically we have every day 10 children who are losing one leg or two legs on average,” Lazzarini told reporters. 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 anesthesia. Save the Children said on Monday that up to 21,000 children are estimated to be missing in the chaos of the war.

The UN’s Rome-based World Food Program, meanwhile, said a new report “paints a stark picture of ongoing hunger”. The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) partnership said its March warning of imminent famine in the north of the Palestinian territory had not materialized. “However, the situation in Gaza remains catastrophic and there is a high and sustained risk of famine across the whole Gaza Strip,” the report said, warning against complacency.

It said around 495,000 people — around 22 percent of the territory’s population, according to the UN — are still facing “catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity”. Another 745,000 people are classified as in a food security emergency.

Meanwhile, in a politically volatile ruling that could upend Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, the Zionist entity’s top court said the government “must act” to draft ultra-Orthodox Jewish men to military service. Students of Jewish seminaries have historically been granted sweeping exemptions from the otherwise mandatory service, but calls within the Zionist entity for more ultra-Orthodox men to join army ranks have swelled during the war, which has seen mass mobilization. - Agencies