Citing the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a press conference on Tuesday that “bombing, gunfire, shelling and airstrikes continue to harm civilians throughout the Gaza Strip.”
He noted that UNICEF announced in a social media post that a 17-year-old girl, one of its Youth Champions, was killed while on her way to take her high school exam.
“We reiterate that civilians, including children, must always be protected,” Dujarric said.
He highlighted that a newly published assessment of displaced sites found that at least 59,000 individual shelters house more than eight people each, while around 38,500 people are sleeping rough.
“About 600,000 people in the assessed sites do not have sufficient access to drinking water,” he said, adding that “half of the sites have no visible drains and almost half reported fire hazards near shelters.”
Dujarric reported that rodent infestation was recorded in 80 percent of the sites, and open sewers and accumulated garbage were present in more than half of the sites.
“In almost 250 countries, housing nearly 250,000 people, incidents involving explosive ordnance were reported,” he said.
Since the ceasefire came into effect on October 10, 2025, Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,027 people and injured 3,280 others, according to Gaza health authorities.
The ceasefire was reached after two years of a war launched by Israel in October 2023.
The offensive killed more than 73,000 Palestinians and injured over 173,000 others, while destroying around 90 percent of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, with the UN estimating reconstruction costs at approximately $70 billion.