UN Officials Value Humanitarian Evacuation Orders For Children

Gaza's children fled with their families. (Twitter/@UNLazzarini)

JAKARTA - United Nations Children's Agency (UNICEF) officials said on Tuesday it was "inhumane" expecting hundreds of thousands of children to leave Gaza, Palestine as camps in the south were unsafe, overcrowded and inadequate to accept them.

Israel on Tuesday announced the start of long-awaited ground operations to Gaza City, the main city center in the enclave where Israel has ordered its residents to flee.

So far, more than 140,000 people have fled south from Gaza City since August 14, according to UN data, from a population of about 1 million people.

"It is inhumane to expect nearly half a million children, who are battered and traumatized by more than 700 days of endless conflict, escaping from one hell and ending up in another," Tess Ingram, a UNICEF spokesman, told reporters via video link from the sprawling tent camp in Manawasi, Gaza. , quoted from Reuters September 17.

The conditions there were so concerning that some of the people who fled Israel's new attack on the world-torn Gaza City in recent days returned to the scene of the bomb crash, he told Reuters.

"People really don't have a good choice - stay in danger or run away to a place they know is also dangerous," he explained, adding that several children had been killed in the Mawasi camp while taking water.

Ingram depicts seeing many people flee through the main road out of Gaza City this week.

A mother, Israa, traveled on foot accompanied by her five hungry and thirsty children, including two who were not wearing shoes, said Ingram, who met them.

"They are walking to an unknown place - without a clear purpose or plan - with little hope of finding entertainment," he said.