Women and children are the main victims the Gaza war, with some 16,000 killed and an estimated two mothers losing their lives every hour since Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel, the U.N. agency promoting gender equality said Friday.

As a result of the more than 100-day conflict, UN Women added, at least 3,000 women may have become widows and heads of households and at least 10,000 children may have lost their fathers.

In a report released Friday, the agency pointed to gender inequality and the burden on women fleeing the fighting with children and being displaced again and again. Of the territory’s 2.3 million population, it said, 1.9 million are displaced and “close to one million are women and girls” seeking shelter and safety.

UN Women’s executive director, Sima Bahous, said this is “a cruel inversion” of fighting during the 15 years before the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. Previously, she said, 67% of all civilians killed in Gaza and the West Bank were men and less then 14% were women.

She echoed U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ calls for a humanitarian ceasefire and the immediate release of all hostages taken captive in Israel on Oct. 7.

“However much we mourn the situation of the women and girls of Gaza today, we will mourn further tomorrow without unrestricted humanitarian assistance and an end to the destruction and killing,” Bahous said in a statement accompanying the report.

“These women and girls are deprived of safety, medicine, health care, and shelter. They face imminent starvation and famine. Most of all they are deprived of hope and justice,” she said.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says nearly 25,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, 70% of them women and children. The United Nations says more than a half million people in Gaza — a quarter of the population — are starving.

In Israel, around 1,200 people were killed during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that sparked the war, and some 250 people were taken hostage by militants. More than 100 hostages are believed to still be held captive in Gaza.

Bahous said UN Women had heard “shocking accounts of unconscionable sexual violence during the attacks” by Hamas, and she echoed U.N. calls for accountability, justice and support for all those affected.

Despite escalating hostilities in Gaza, the agency said women-led and women’s rights organizations continue to operate. It found that 83% of women’s organizations surveyed in the Gaza Strip are at least partially operational, mainly focusing on the emergency response to the war.

But UN Women said its analysis of funding from las year’s flash appeal for Gaza found that just 0.09% of funding went directly to national or local women’s rights organizations.

Bahous said there is a need for much more aid to get to Gaza, especially to women and children, and for an end to the war.

“This is a time for peace,” she said. “We owe this to all Israeli and Palestinian women and girls. This is not their conflict. They must no longer pay its price.”

Nearly 20,000 babies born into Gaza war 'hell': UN

A newborn at a hospital in Rafah in October 2023, a few weeks after Hamas militants attacked Israel.

The United Nations said Friday that thousands of babies had been born in conditions "beyond belief" in Gaza since the war there erupted more than three months ago.

UNICEF spokeswoman Tess Ingram, back from a recent visit to the Gaza Strip, described mothers bleeding to death and one nurse who had performed emergency caesareans on six dead women.

Nearly 20,000 babies have been born into the war that began after the Hamas attacks inside Israel on October 7, according to UNICEF, the UN children's agency.

"That's a baby born into this horrendous war every 10 minutes," Ingram told reporters in Geneva via videolink from Oman.

"Becoming a mother should be a time for celebration. In Gaza, it's another child delivered into hell," she said, emphasising a need for urgent international action.

"Seeing newborn babies suffer, while some mothers bleed to death, should keep us all awake at night," she said.

Hamas's October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of about 1,140 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Israel has vowed to "annihilate" Hamas in response, and its air and ground offensive has killed at least 24,762 Palestinians, around 70 percent of them women, children and adolescents, according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry.

Ingram described "heartbreaking" meetings with women caught up in the chaos.

- 'Unimaginable challenges' -

One woman, Mashael, was pregnant when her house was hit and her husband buried under the rubble for several days, and her baby stopped moving.

"She says she is sure now, about a month later, that the baby is dead," Ingram said. But, she added: "She is still waiting for medical care."

Mashael had told her it was best "a baby isn't born into this nightmare", she said.

Ingram also told the story of a nurse named Webda, who said she had performed emergency caesareans on six dead women in the past eight weeks.

"Mothers face unimaginable challenges in accessing adequate medical care, nutrition and protection before, during and after giving birth," Ingram said.

"The situation of pregnant women and newborns in the Gaza Strip is beyond belief, and it demands intensified and immediate actions."

The infant mortality rate in Gaza at the moment is unknown, she said.

But she added: "It is safe to say that children are dying now because of the humanitarian crisis on the ground as well as from the bombs and bullets."

Ingram said the Emirati Hospital in Rafah was now catering to the vast majority of pregnant women in Gaza.

"Struggling with overcrowded conditions and limited resources, staff are forced to discharge mothers within three hours of a caesarean," she said.

"These conditions put mothers at risk from miscarriages, stillbirths, preterm labour, maternal mortality and emotional trauma."

Many pregnant and breastfeeding women and infants are living in "inhumane" conditions, including makeshift shelters, with poor nutrition and unsafe water, she said.

This, she warned, was "putting approximately 135,000 children under two at risk of severe malnutrition".

"Humanity cannot allow this warped version of normal to persist any longer. Mothers and newborns need a humanitarian ceasefire."

Gaza destruction risks lost generation of children, says UN official

Gaza has seen relentless bombing since the war began

This week Al Israa University became the latest major public building in Gaza to disappear from the map, blown up and destroyed by Israeli forces who had reportedly used it as a military base for several weeks.

The war in Gaza has already let to an unprecedented loss of life, but there's also growing concern about the destruction of public and private buildings.

Now a senior UN official has told BBC News of his fears that the widespread damage will lead to a "lost generation" of young people.

Israel declared war on Hamas after the group led a massive attack on communities inside Israel, killing about 1,200 people - mostly civilians - and taking some 240 others back to Gaza as hostages.

Around 130 remain in captivity. Almost 25,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry,

The United Nations' Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) publishes regular bulletins on the impact of the war, and they make for grim reading.

Its latest updates say that at least 60% of homes or housing units in Gaza have been "destroyed or damaged". Nine in every 10 schools have suffered "significant damage". Hospitals, public buildings and electricity networks have also been hit.

Amir Mohammed Al-Najjari is 22 years old. He's originally from Jabalia in northern Gaza but has been forced with his family to move to a makeshift camp near Khan Younis in the south.

He and his siblings have seen their dreams disappear in clouds of smoke.

"My sister was studying in the third year of Al-Quds University, but it was bombed. And my brother was in his final year of school, at Khalil Al-Rahman school, but it too was bombed," says Amir sitting outside the makeshift tent the family now calls home.

His own predicament mirrors his brother's and sister's.

"I have finished my degree in engineering. If there was no war, I would have a job interview and perhaps I would have been accepted. Finally, there's my younger brother, who is in the seventh grade. He was studying in the UN school. Nothing is left of it."

Like any society, Gaza's future is its children. But here, they're disproportionately victims of war and, says the UN, may lose out completely on what should be rightfully theirs

Phillippe Lazzarini is the Commissioner General for UNRWA - the UN agency with specific responsibility for Palestinian refugees. He's just returned from his fourth visit to Gaza since the start of the war.

"There are today more than half a million children in the primary and secondary school system. How will they go back if you cannot bring people back to their homes which have been completely destroyed," Mr Lazzarini tells me.

"And I'm afraid that we're running the risk here of losing a generation of children."

Images of Israeli troops cheering as educational institutions were blown up went viral on social media, including one showing the complete demolition of a distinctive blue UN school in northern Gaza.

Such incidents have led to accusations of "collective punishment" - that Israel is methodically and deliberately destroying institutions including schools in retaliation for what happened when armed Hamas gunmen stormed over the Gaza fence on 7 October.

"Cogat" is the military division that co-ordinates Israeli government activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, including the supervision of aid convoys entering Gaza.

When I asked a senior Cogat official why it was necessary to demolish an entire school after it had already been overrun by Israeli forces, he replied that "Hamas cynically invade and use civilian structures" (like schools) to launch attacks against Israeli troops.

The official also said it was "fact" that Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups were using medical facilities as bases and that in virtually every hospital IDF soldiers had found "terrorist infrastructure".

Whatever the veracity of those accusations - and they've been regularly challenged by health officials and aid agencies - Gaza's health system is broken.

The World Health Organization says that only 13 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are functional, many have been damaged in airstrikes. With shortages in basic medical equipment those who need treatment often go without.

Cancer patients and those requiring specialist treatment like kidney dialysis, or neo-natal babies, are especially vulnerable, says the Ocha bulletin.

Nisreen Abu Nimr is also from northern Gaza. She is married, and was a mother to two children, one of whom was killed in a bombing earlier in the war. Nisreen has also been suffering from cancer since 2016.

"I was receiving regular medical treatment for my cancer at a hospital here in Gaza. But, during the Israeli aggression, medical treatments haven't been provided for four months," says Nisreen.

Some prominent right-wing Israeli politicians, including members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, have suggested the only way to guarantee security for Israel is to "encourage" civilians to leave Gaza for Egypt or other Arab countries and to even re-establish Jewish settlements in the territory.

Israel denies accusations of deliberately turning Gaza into a wasteland, but Mr Lazzarini fears the net impact is that people might have no choice but to leave.

"The facts on the ground are indeed pointing in this direction," he tells me, clearly anxious that the longer the fighting continues the worse the predicament for more than a million displaced Gazans will become.

"What we have seen is a breakdown in civil order," adds Mr Lazzarini. "Virtually all infrastructure including water and electricity have been badly damaged, so basic public services in Gaza are not available any more."

Cogat officials have disputed the scale of Gaza's humanitarian crisis and they told me Israel does not target civilians or public infrastructure, unless it is suspected of being used by armed Palestinian groups.

They also say they're working daily in collaboration with UN agencies to get more aid into Gaza.

With other key institutions like Gaza's parliament and a brand-new courthouse - the Palace of Justice, paid for by Qatar - also destroyed by Israeli forces, there's very little left of Gazan society.

Israel's prime minister insists his military campaign in Gaza will continue until "total victory" and Hamas is no longer a threat to Israel.

Official Israeli government policy is that ultimately no Israelis will remain in Gaza, but what will be left of the territory on the day when the war, eventually, ends?