The United Nations children's agency, UNICEF, declared on Friday that the ceasefire implemented in Gaza over eight months ago is a "deadly illusion," citing the deaths of 265 children since the fighting was purportedly halted.
Despite a ceasefire agreement announced in October 2025, the health ministry of the occupied territory, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN, reports that Israel has continued airstrikes across Gaza, resulting in the deaths of at least 992 Palestinians. UNICEF spokesman James Elder stated that the number of Palestinian children killed since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was announced is 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," Elder informed 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 emphasized that the children killed since the ceasefire declaration "were not killed in a war zone." He elaborated, "They were killed in their homes. In their schools. Playing football. Fishing. They were shot, bombed, struck by quadcopters." He questioned, "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."
Elder provided recent examples, including the killing of a two-year-old boy shot by Israeli forces, a 13-year-old boy shot inside his tent, and a five-year-old boy and his father killed in an Israeli strike. He added that over 400 children have been injured since the ceasefire, many with severe wounds. Hundreds of children require urgent medical evacuation, while Israeli restrictions on essential medicines exacerbate their suffering and increase the risk of infection, complications, and amputations.
The agency also highlighted the profound psychological trauma affecting Gaza's children, where "fear, loss and violence... is woven into the very fabric of their childhood." Elder insisted that the continued killing of children is a result of a "lack of political will," not a lack of options. He urged the international community to "stop accepting levels of child deaths that would provoke international outrage anywhere else in the world" and to "stop normalising the abnormal."
