Khaled Quzmar, the general director of the child rights organisation Defence for Children International Palestine, has said the atrocities committed against children in Gaza are unprecedented.

Quzmar talked to Al Jazeera from Ramallah after UK-based Save the Children called for an investigation into Gaza’s missing children, stressing that 21,000 children were estimated to be lost, disappeared, detained, buried under the rubble or in mass graves as a result of the Israeli operation in Gaza.

“We are working in this field for more than 30 years, but what we are witnessing [in Gaza] is at a level that we did not see during the second world war,” he said.

“It is a war against children. Children in Gaza are the big cost of the Israeli genocide in Gaza,” Quzmar said.

“Children are also subjected to war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he stressed, adding: “The fundamental rights of the children in Gaza are violated systematically and continuously by the Israeli army.”