10 children are losing legs in Gaza every day
The children of Gaza are the clearest measure of the world’s failure — or its unwillingness — to stop the machinery of annihilation.
Over 134,000 people — among them more than 40,500 children — have sustained war‑related injuries, with roughly 10 children per day losing one or both legs, a new report by a UN-led humanitarian coordination body has revealed.
The report by the Global Protection Cluster paints a picture of indiscriminate targeting of civilians, especially children, as the Israelis have continued their barbaric onslaught in Gaza unabated for nearly two years. These findings form part of a documented pattern of mass suffering and deliberate devastation in a besieged enclave that was described more than two decades ago by an Israeli sociologist as “the largest concentration camp ever to exist” — long before the Israelis accelerated their genocide in October 2023.
Here are some stark numbers from the report — titled Update Analysis Protection - Risks and barriers faced by persons with disabilities and older persons — that reveal the extent of the damage in Gaza:
134,105 people (including over 40,500 children) have sustained new war‑related injuries over the last 21 months.
25 percent of those newly injured are estimated to have disabilities requiring ongoing, acute rehabilitation.
More than 35,000 people suffer significant hearing damage due to explosions.
On average, ten children per day lose one or both legs.
1,580 medical personnel have been killed.
467 humanitarian staff have lost their lives.
Only 47 per cent of hospitals remain at least partially functional — the rest are destroyed.
Gaza is buried under explosive ordnance and rubble totalling over 50 million tons.
Severe movement and aid restrictions have resulted in:
Over 83 percent of persons with disabilities have lost their assistive devices.
80 percent of older persons urgently need medication or medical supplies.
These numbers are most likely a vast undercount, severely limited by the Gaza health ministry’s inability to keep pace with documenting the carnage amid the sheer scale of Israeli barbarism and rapidly dwindling resources. Yet, these statistics represent the silent collapse of civilian dignity — the slow, grinding destruction of bodies, homes, and the very possibility of recovery.
The Israelis have always taken perverse pleasure in targeting Palestinian children during their previous assaults on Gaza. Their bloodlust has been ramped up to eleven during the ongoing genocide. Prominent ministers in the Israeli government have consistently broadcast their view that they see no innocents in Gaza and everyone in the tiny enclave — which the Israelis have blockaded since 2007 with no one able to exit without Israel’s permission — is fair game in their campaign of endless slaughter.
The genocidal rhetoric of the Zionists has closely followed their actions over the last two years. The Israelis have killed more than 17,000 children in Gaza and the enclave has the highest number of child amputees in the world.
Due to the fact that the Israelis have meticulously targeted the medical infrastructure and medical personnel while laying a complete siege on the entry of necessary medicines and medical equipment, most of the amputations are performed without anaesthesia, compounding the horrors for the child victims of the Jewish supremacist genocide unfolding in Gaza. The sheer barbarity of these circumstances is difficult to overstate. Pain has been weaponised.
The firepower of the Western-supplied bombs has been so intense, and the capacity of the medical community in Gaza so drastically curtailed, that doctors have had to prioritise patients with the best chance of survival.
Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a surgeon from North Carolina who volunteered in Gaza last year, recounted in an interview with CBS News that the victims of the Israeli Holocaust were “almost exclusively children” and the Israelis so expertly targeted the Palestinian children that he couldn’t put his “stethoscope over their heart more accurately and directly on the side of the head, in the same child”:
“All of the disasters I’ve seen, combined — 40 mission trips, 30 years, Ground Zero, earthquakes, all of that combined — doesn’t equal the level of carnage that I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza.”
“I’ve seen more incinerated children than I've ever seen in my entire life, combined. [My patients were] almost exclusively children. I’ve never seen that before. Never seen that. I’ve seen more incinerated children than I’ve ever seen in my entire life combined. I’ve seen more shredded children in just the first week. Shredded. Missing body parts, being crushed by buildings, the greatest majority, or bomb explosions the next greatest majority. We’ve taken shrapnel as big as my thumb out of eight‑year‑olds.”
“And then there’s sniper bullets. I have children that were shot twice. I have two children that I have photographs of that were shot so perfectly in the chest I couldn’t put my stethoscope over their heart more accurately and directly on the side of the head, in the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the ‘world’s best sniper,’ and they’re dead‑centre shots.”
“How do you be an orphan, watching your family, you know, melted in front of you and shredded in front of you — how do you fix that, ever fix that?”
This firsthand testimony from a seasoned trauma surgeon is an indictment. A portrait of systemic annihilation aimed at a defenceless population.
Dr. Perlmutter visited Gaza in April 2024. More than a year of genocide has followed since then with the added barbarism of a complete siege on food, medicines, and other essentials. On July 18, health ministry in Gaza put the number of children who have perished due to malnutrition at 69 — after nearly five months of blockade.
Other than the non-stop bombs, rising prices, closed bakeries, fuel shortages, and Israeli-assisted looting near aid sites have all conspired to strip away the fragile nutritional lifelines children once had. Last week, Israel killed about a dozen children who had queued up to receive nutritional supplements in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.
The targeting of Palestinian children by the Israelis has been a feature of their genocide, and the latest report by the UN-led humanitarian coordination body affirms this. Beyond the statistics and testimonies lies a deeper truth: that a generation is being erased — not just in body, but in spirit, in future, in memory.
In Gaza, the battlefield extends into children’s homes, schools and streets. Over 50 million tonnes of rubble litter urban spaces where homes once stood, turning every displaced child’s steps into a minefield of lethal debris. Each step through this wreckage is a gamble, each day without clearance increases the odds of injury or death, with children — especially the amputees — tragically at the centre of this dangerous landscape.
While the report makes little explicit mention of schooling, the destruction of civilian infrastructure is total, and the displacement of almost every family ensures that prolonged education is a near impossibility. The psychological toll, compounded by physical injuries and deep hunger, wipes out any chance of normal childhood development.
There are no classrooms. There are no playgrounds. There is no food. There is no water. There are no nutritional supplements. Childhood itself has been bombed into extinction.
In Gaza, the Holocaust continues apace — in the last breaths of infants suffocating under the remains of their homes, in the screams of amputated children, in the hollowed eyes of mothers who can no longer produce milk, in the silence of classrooms reduced to rubble, in playgrounds obliterated by 2,000-pound bombs shipped all the way from Missouri. The children of Gaza are the clearest measure of the world’s failure — or its unwillingness — to stop the machinery of annihilation.
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Someone please tell me how there can be so many evil and uncaring people in this world. I feel so alone and helpless when I see pictures of the children.
So horrifying even difficult to read! Thanks for reporting!