GENEVA: The ceasefire declared in Gaza more than eight months ago is a "deadly illusion", the UN charged on Friday, with 265 children killed there since the fighting was supposed to have stopped. Despite a ceasefire being declared in October 2025, Israel has continued to launch strikes across Gaza, killing at least 992 Palestinians since then, according to the occupied territory's health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.
UNICEF Condemns Continued Violence
The UN children's agency said the number of Palestinian children killed since the ceasefire was announced between Israel and Hamas, which runs Gaza, was an "absurd and devastating figure". "During a period supposedly defined by restraint and protection, a child has been killed, on average, every single day for more than eight months," UNICEF spokesman James Elder told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Amman.
"For many, many months, the world has been told there is a ceasefire in Gaza. Yet for Palestinian children, this so-called ceasefire has become a cruel and a deadly illusion." Elder stressed that the children killed since the ceasefire was declared "were not killed in a war zone". "They were killed in their homes. In their schools. Playing football. Fishing. They were shot, bombed, struck by quadcopters," he said.
Questioning the Ceasefire's Credibility
"If a child is being killed every day, surely the debate is no longer about the quality of the ceasefire. It is about the credibility of calling it one." This week, he pointed out, "a two-year-old boy was shot and killed by Israeli forces; a 13-year-old boy was shot and killed inside his tent; a five-year-old boy and his father were killed by an Israeli strike, and on and on it goes".
