MADRID, August 23. /TASS/. Up to 600,000 children have to live amid the debris in the war-town Gaza Strip amid the ongoing Israeli-Hamas conflict, Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said.

In an interview with the Spanish El Pais newspaper, he noted that these children have psychological traumas. The agency, in his words, has organized classes for some 10,000 children at shelters they are living in and plans to increase this number to 200,000. He stressed that the idea is to begin healing children’s psychological traumas amid the absence of schools and safe places in Gaza.

He stressed that it would be a long a painful process of the enclave’s restoration for its residents in case a ceasefire is ultimately reached. It is very difficult to imagine the Gaza Strip’s future if there is no common striving for a political settlement, he added.

The Al Jazeera television channel reported on August 20 that nearly 40,140 Palestinians have been killed and around 93,000 more have been injured in the course of the ongoing escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 240 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria, as well as a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Clashes are also reported in the West Bank.