Save the Children International said Monday that about 21,000 children in the Gaza Strip remained under the rubble, were arrested or buried in unmarked or mass graves.

The number of children separated from their families has increased due to escalating Israeli attacks on the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, and that those protecting the unprotected children are under pressure,” the British-based organization said in a statement.

It said about 17,000 children have been separated from their families or missing in Gaza, and about 4,000 children are still under the rubble or in mass graves or unmarked graves.

The organization confirmed the arrest of an unknown number of children, expecting they were taken out of the Gaza Strip.

The organization said the bodies of those buried under the rubble or burned to death in tents during Israeli bombing were hard to identify.

“It is tormenting that families do not know where their loved ones are. No parent should dig in the rubble or mass graves to find their child, and
no child should remain alone and unprotected in a war zone,” said Save the Children International Interim Regional Director, Middle East North Africa and Eastern Europe, Jeremy Stoner.

Stoner called Gaza “a child cemetery,” adding that the danger to living and missing children still continues and stressing the need for an urgent ceasefire to find the missing children and reunite them with their families if they were alive.

Source: Jordan News Agency