Gaza Registry Tracks 54,468 Children Without Parents Since October 2023

Gaza's social development ministry has registered 54,468 children who lost one or both parents since the war began in October 2023.

Mariam Abu Asser, 16, Aya, 14, and Jebril, 12, have moved between aunts' tents every two days since last year's ceasefire began. Their father died during Israel's 2014 offensive. Their Gaza City home was destroyed when the war that began in 2023 started, and the three moved with their mother, Islam, into a makeshift tent in Deir al-Balah. Nineteen days after the ceasefire took effect on 10 October 2025, an Israeli bomb struck the tent and killed her in front of them. Jebril was in her lap at the time and was injured.

Their aunt Warda al-Muzeini said the children stay mainly with their paternal grandmother and rotate between maternal aunts, two nights per. Muzeini lost her husband in an Israeli air strike and raises four children without a job or reliable income, she said, and struggles to provide one meal a day. Another aunt is also a widow. The sisters divide costs among themselves: one buys pyjamas, another slippers, another gives pocket money for a few days.

Ministry records list at least 64,000 widows across Gaza and 71,000 orphaned children when counting deaths from earlier Israeli military attacks on the territory. The orphan registration system shows about 3,000 children with no registered guardian, custodian or caregiver.

Ministry spokesperson Aziza al-Kahlout said children who lose both parents are deprived of education and childhood and forced to carry responsibilities beyond their years. She warned of "deeply alarming signs of growing risks of child labour, school dropout and early marriage in Gaza," driven by poverty, displacement and the loss of family breadwinners.

Wafaa al-Attar was 10 when she left home on 22 February 2024 to charge her father's phone at her uncle's nearby house. An air strike hit the multi-storey building in Deir al-Balah where her family was, killing her father Ahmed, her mother Khouloud, and siblings Rital, 8, Muhammed, 5, Obada, 3, and nine-month-old Yazan. Attar, now 13, suffered minor shrapnel injuries and was taken to hospital. She stayed first with grandparents, then moved in with her uncle, his wife and their newborn.

No date has been set for the ministry to release further counts or for a review of the roughly 3,000 children listed without a registered caregiver.