A spokesperson for the UN’s children’s aid agency says the Gaza ceasefire is “critical and so overdue” as about 35 children have been killed daily in the enclave over the past 15 months, Al Jazeera reports.

James Elder told a UN briefing in Geneva that a peer-reviewed report in The Lancet had casualties exceeding the number reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry, which had reported upwards of 15,000 children being killed.

In 2025 alone, he said, an average of 10 children have lost their lives daily in Gaza. “This [ceasefire] deal should have happened much earlier.”

He added that what is needed now is phase one, phase two and phase three of the ceasefire to take place simultaneously.