NEW YORK, Monday, April 29, 2024 (WAFA) – Children are living amid rubble in streets of total devastation in Khan Yunis, the second largest city in Gaza which had a population of more than 200,000 people, including about 100,000 children, according to Save the Children staff returning to the city for the first time since the war started over six months ago.
Now Khan Yunis is a ghost town, with people returning in small numbers to protect what remains of their properties or retrieve belongings while lone children roam the streets seeking water and other supplies, said Save the Children.
Sacha Myers, a Save the Children spokesperson, said after traveling with Save the Children Team Leader in Gaza, Karyn Beattie, to Khan Yunis this month to assess the damage, road access to key areas and check on the number of people returning, that: “I actually felt physically sick – my body’s reaction to seeing this absolute brutality, for this total disregard for human life.”
Sacha described the scenes as apocalyptic.
“I’ve been to a lot of warzones and disasters, but I’ve never been in a situation where as far as the eye can see, every building is rubble. In some conflicts, you will see devastation, but there are gaps between damage and buildings still standing. Here – you turn 360 degrees - every single building is either severely damaged or rubble on the ground. And not just one or two streets, but dozens of streets. It’s everywhere,” she added.
“I was also struck by the number of lone children. You are driving through what feels like an empty street and then suddenly you see children climbing out of the rubble. I saw so many children carrying containers, I guess of water - I don’t know for how far they were carrying them – all by themselves, through these destroyed streets. You could see the containers were heavy and hard for the little kids to manage. It was eerie and terrible to see so many children by themselves, knowing how dangerous it is to be in those collapsed and semi-collapsed buildings.”
For her part, Karyn Beattie, Save the Children’s Team Leader in Gaza, said: “We are all completely in shock at the level of destruction.”
“We are all just so angry at what has happened and the extent of the damage. How is it possible to raze a city like this? And seeing the schools totally destroyed - with the colored murals on the sides –and knowing that children may have been killed in them. How can you not be angry?” she said.
“These buildings are the lifeblood of a society. They are the foundations that make a community and a country and speak to its future. The money and time it will take to rebuild... if the bombs stop falling... will be crippling. A generation of children, if they survive, will have nowhere to learn from and nowhere to go,” said Save the Children’s Team Leader.
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