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Gaza: Thirsty and starving, war-battered families face ‘inhumane’ evacuation
As bombs continue to fall on Gaza City as part of the intensifying Israeli military operation, families with starving children are being pushed southwards from one “hellscape” to another, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday.
The development followed reports that the Israeli military had stepped up its ground offensive in Gaza City, ordering residents to leave the area. Speaking from the south of the enclave, UNICEF’s Tess Ingram described the forced mass displacement of families as a “deadly threat for the most vulnerable”.
“It is inhumane to expect nearly half a million children battered and traumatized by over 700 days of unrelenting conflict to flee one hellscape to end up in another,” she insisted.
According to the UN’s humanitarian affairs coordination office, OCHA, over the past few days, partners monitoring the movement of people in Gaza counted almost 70,000 displacements heading south, and about 150,000 over the past month. The only available route, Al Rashid Road, was “very busy” when Ms. Ingram was there on Monday, she said.
The UNICEF spokesperson described meeting a mother who had walked for more than six hours from Gaza City to the South with her five children, “all dirty, thirsty and starving”, two of them with no shoes. Such families are being pushed to “a so-called humanitarian zone” encompassing Al-Mawasi and surrounding areas, she said.
Ms. Ingram described their destination as “a sea of makeshift tents, human despair” and services which are “insufficient” to support the hundreds of thousands already living there as “yet more are forced to join them,” she said.
Child malnutrition in Gaza is “spiralling”, Ms. Ingram continued, pointing out that according to UNICEF’s estimations, some 26,000 children in the enclave currently require treatment for acute malnutrition, including more than 10,000 in Gaza City alone.
Famine was confirmed late last month in Gaza City by UN-backed food insecurity experts. In a related development, senior independent rights investigators appointed by the UN Human Rights Council alleged on Tuesday that in Gaza, Israeli authorities and security forces “committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” – one of them being deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians. Israel has categorically rejected the experts’ report.
UNICEF’s Ms. Ingram said that owing to evacuation orders and military escalation more nutrition centres in Gaza City have been forced to shut this week, “cutting off children from a third of the remaining treatment sites that can save their lives”.
While humanitarians remain on site and continue responding to the crisis, “it is becoming harder with every bombardment and every denial”, she stressed.
According to OCHA, last Sunday out of 17 missions that humanitarian teams coordinated with the Israeli authorities, only four were facilitated, while seven missions were denied and others were impeded on the ground or had to be cancelled.
Ms. Ingram spoke of the dilemma desperate Gazans face: “stay in danger or flee to a place that they also know is dangerous.” She recalled that Al-Mawasi came under attack some two weeks ago, when eight children were killed while lining up for water; the youngest victim was three years old.
“People really do have no good option,” she insisted, to the point where some families are “coming down, having a look and going back to Gaza City”, when they realize that “there is nowhere safe” to go.
-Ends -
STORY Gaza Al-Mawasi update – UNICEF 16 September 2025
TRT: 2:10”
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH/NATS
ASPECT RATIO: 16:9
DATELINE: 16 SEPTEMBER 2025 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Exterior wide shot: Palais des Nations, Flag Alley.
2. Wide shot: Speakers at the podium of the press conference; speaker on screens; journalists in the Press room.
3. SOUNDBITE (English) – Tess Ingram, Communication Manager for North Africa and the Middle East, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF): “Here in Gaza, I'm witnessing right now how the forced mass displacement of families from Gaza City is a deadly threat for the most vulnerable. It is inhumane to expect nearly half a million children battered and traumatized by over 700 days of unrelenting conflict to flee one hellscape to end up in another.”
4. Wide shot: Journalists in the Press room; speaker on screens.
5. SOUNDBITE (English) – Tess Ingram, Communication Manager for North Africa and the Middle East, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF): “Child malnutrition in Gaza is spiralling. We estimate 26,000 children in the Gaza Strip currently require treatment for acute malnutrition today, including more than 10,000 in Gaza City alone.”
6. Medium wide shot: Speaker at the podium of the press conference; speaker on screens.
7. SOUNDBITE (English) – Tess Ingram, Communication Manager for North Africa and the Middle East, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF): “More nutrition centres in Gaza City have been forced to shut this week due to evacuation orders and military escalation, bringing the total to 16, cutting off children from a third of the remaining treatment sites that can save their lives. We're here and responding, but it is becoming harder with every bombardment and every denial.”
8. Wide shot: Speaker at the podium of the press conference; speaker on screens; journalists in the Press room.
9. SOUNDBITE (English) – Tess Ingram, Communication Manager for North Africa and the Middle East, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF): “People really do have no good option, stay in danger or flee to a place that they also know is dangerous because it has come under attack as recently as two weeks ago when eight children were killed while lining up to collect water, the youngest was three years old, in Al-Mawasi, this so-called humanitarian zone.”
10. Wide shot: Speaker at the podium of the press conference; speaker on screens; journalists in the Press room.
11. SOUNDBITE (English) – Tess Ingram, Communication Manager for North Africa and the Middle East, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF): “We’re also seeing families choose to stay in Gaza City and as you said, some families coming down, having a look and going back to Gaza City, like one family that I met who decided to not make the journey after doing a reconnaissance mission because they said there is nowhere safe for us to go.”
12. Various shots of journalists in the Press room.
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The key findings from WMO’s State of Global Water Resources 2025 report covering the hydrological cycle and extreme events in the five-year period to last year:
- 2025 was one of driest years for river discharge in 35 years
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- Water storage on Earth’s land surface has decreased in past decade
- Widespread glacier loss across all regions for fourth consecutive year
- Asia and Africa are regions most affected by water-related disasters
- Water data availability has improved, but gaps remain in hard-hit areas
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Groundwater reserves are equally stretched and have been in decline since 2014, WMO’s report states, with nearly two-thirds of monitored wells worldwide showing levels lower than the historical norm and indicating a shift “further toward deficit…not recovery”.
“At the same time, we are seeing more water-related disasters,” Ms. Saulo said, while also stressing that the currently strengthening El Niño “will increase the risk of drought in some areas, and flooding in others”.
Glaciers disappearing
In 2025, for the fourth consecutive year, every major glaciated region on Earth lost ice mass, leading to short-term hazards including floods and long-term water insecurity, according to WMO.
Responding to a question about whether the changing global water cycle might have contributed to the deadly Nepal-China flooding disaster, Ms. Saulo explained that melting ice and rock was just one factor in the chain of events that ultimately sent a massive and deadly wall of water and debris downstream on 26 August, killing at least 1,367 people.
“You asked if it could happen again? Absolutely; the problem in this region is that there’s 63,700 glaciers at the last count,” she told a Press Conference in Geneva. “Even if you’re looking with remote sensing with satellites at these glaciers, you might see some faults, you might see some slight shifting, that does not mean necessarily catastrophic collapse. So, in order to plan for this, it’s very, very difficult. But the international community is looking very hard at ways in which we can bring people together to solve some of these monitoring issues.”
Data indicates that glaciers shrank between 2023 and 2025 with cumulative losses of 1,400 gigatonnes of water – or about one third of annual fresh water needs.
Every major glacier region on Earth lost ice for the fourth consecutive year.
“All 19 glacier regions around the globe lost ice; in Central Asia, Iceland, the Russian Arctic and western Canada and the United States, it was among the three worst years on record,” said Wayne Jenkinson, WMO’s Director of Hydrology and Cryosphere.
Some regions with smaller glaciers such as Central Europe, the Caucasus, the western Canada and the United States may already have reached “peak water”, Mr. Jenkinson warned.
“After this point, the glacier gives less meltwater each year simply because there is less ice left to melt. That matters for every community downstream that relies on water during hot, dry summers,” he explained.
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Preparing for moving baselines
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Mr. Jenkinson said governments need to prepare for “moving baselines” as historical patterns become less reliable.
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ends