By Olivia Le Poidevin
GENEVA (Reuters) -The U.N. children’s charity UNICEF called on Friday for all crossings for food aid into war-shattered Gaza to be opened, saying deaths among children could rise given their immune systems have been badly compromised.
“The situation is critical. We risk seeing a massive spike in child death, not only neonatal, but also infants, given their immune systems are more compromised than ever before,” said UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires.
Israeli troops began pulling back from some parts of the Palestinian territory on Friday under a ceasefire deal with Hamas, in the first phase of an initiative by U.S. President Donald Trump to end the two-year-old war.
The United Nations plans to ramp up its delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, where some areas are experiencing famine, in the first 60 days of a ceasefire in the enclave, a top U.N. official said on Thursday.
Nutrition support is the main priority, UNICEF said, with 50,000 children at risk of acute malnutrition and in need of immediate treatment.
Pires said children’s immunity was low because “they haven’t been eating properly and recently at all for way too long”.
“With children, they need to have the right vitamins and the nutrients to develop and be able to cope with temperature changes, or virus outbreaks,” he added.
(Reporting by Olivia Le PoidevinEditing by Miranda Murray and Frances Kerry)
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