What's it like to be a parent in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 3,600 children so far?

More than 3,600 Palestinian children have been killed in the first 25 days of Israel's war on blockaded Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. They were hit by air strikes, smashed by misfired rockets, burned by blasts and crushed by buildings, and among them were newborns and toddlers, avid readers, aspiring journalists and boys who thought they'd be safe in a church.

Nearly half of the crowded enclave's 2.3 million inhabitants are under 18, and children account for 40 percent of those killed so far in the war. An Associated Press analysis of Gaza Health Ministry data released last week showed that as of October 26, 2,001 children ages 12 and under had been killed, including 615 who were 3 or younger.

"When houses are destroyed, they collapse on the heads of children," writer Adam al Madhoun said on Wednesday as he comforted his four-year-old daughter Kenzi at the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza city of Deir al Balah. She survived an air strike that ripped off her right arm, crushed her left leg and fractured her skull.

Israel claims its air strikes target Hamas fighters and infrastructure, but the heart-wrenching scenes on the ground offer a totally different picture.

More children have been killed in just over three weeks in Gaza than in all of the world's conflicts combined in each of the past three years, according to the global charity Save the Children. For example, it said, 2,985 children were killed across two dozen war zones throughout all of last year.

"Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children," said James Elder, a spokesperson for UNICEF, the UN children's agency.

'Running from death only to find death'

Images and footage of shell-shocked children being pulled from rubble in Gaza or writhing on dirty hospital gurneys have become commonplace and have fueled protests around the world.

Scenes from recent air strikes included a rescuer cradling a limp toddler in a bloodied white tutu, a bespectacled father shrieking as he clutched his dead child tight to his chest, and a dazed young boy covered in blood and dust staggering alone through the ruins.

"It's a curse to be a parent in Gaza," said Ahmed Modawikh, a 40-year-old carpenter from Gaza City whose life was shattered by the death of his eight-year-old daughter during five days of fighting in May.

Israeli children have also been killed. During Hamas' surprise blitz across southern Israel on October 7, Israel says it lost more than 1,400 people. About 30 children were also among the roughly 240 hostages Hamas took.

As Israeli warplanes pound Gaza, Palestinian children huddle with large families in apartments or UN-run shelters. Although Israel has demanded Palestinians to leave northern Gaza for the strip's south, nowhere in the territory has proven safe from its indiscriminate air strikes.

"People are running from death only to find death," said Yasmine Jouda, who lost 68 family members in October 22 air strikes that razed two four-storey buildings in Deir al Balah, where they had sought refuge from northern Gaza.

The strike's only survivor was Jouda's year-old niece Milissa, whose mother had gone into labour during the attack and was found dead beneath the rubble, the heads of her lifeless twin newborns emerging from her birth canal.

"What did this tiny baby do to deserve a life without any family?" Jouda said.

Palestinians point to the soaring casualty count as proof that Israeli strikes are indiscriminate and disproportionate.

The war has wounded more than 7,000 Palestinian children and left many with life-changing problems, doctors say.

Just before the war, Jouda's niece Milissa walked a few paces for the first time. She will never walk again. Doctors say the air strike that killed the girl's family fractured her spine and paralysed her from the chest down. Just down the hall from her in the teeming central Gaza hospital, 4-year-old Kenzi woke up screaming, asking what had happened to her missing right arm.

"It will take so much care and work just to get her to the point of having half a normal life," her father said.

Even those physically unscathed may be scarred by war's ravages.

For 15-year-olds in Gaza, it's their fifth Israel-Gaza war and death is everywhere.

Here are just a few of the 3,648 Palestinian children and minors who have been killed by Israel.

Aseel Hassan, 13

Aseel Hassan was an excellent student, said her father, Hazem Bin Saeed. She devoured classical Arabic poetry, memorising its rigid metric and rhyme scheme, and reveling in its mystical images and florid metaphors. During the war, when Israeli bombardments came so close that their walls shook, she would regale her relatives by reciting famous verses from Abu Al Tayyib al Mutanabbi, a 10th-century Iraqi poet, her father said.

"When I asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up, she would say, read," said 42-year-old Bin Saeed. "Poems were Aseel's escape."

An Israeli air strike on October 19 levelled his three-storey home in Deir al Balah, killing Aseel and her 14-year-old brother, Anas.

Majd Souri, 7

The explosions terrified Majd, said his father, 45-year-old Ramez Souri.

He missed playing soccer with his school friends. He was devastated that the war had canceled his Christian family's much-anticipated trip to Nazareth, the town in Israel where tradition says Jesus grew up.

"Baba, where can we go?" Majd asked again and again when air strikes roared. The family, devout members of Gaza's tiny Christian community, finally had an answer — St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City.

Souri said Majd calmed down when they arrived at the church, where dozens of Christian families had taken shelter. Together, they prayed and sang.

On October 20, Israeli shrapnel crashed into the monastery, killing 18 people. Among the dead were Majd and his siblings, 9-year-old Julie and 15-year-old Soheil. As usual, Israel claimed it had been targeting a nearby Hamas command centre.

Majd was found beneath the rubble with his hands around his mother's neck. His face was completely burned.

"My children just wanted peace and stability," said Souri, his voice cracking. "All I cared about was that they were happy."

Kenan and Neman al Sharif, 18 months

Karam al Sharif, an employee with the UN Palestinian refugee agency, could barely speak on Wednesday as he knelt over his children's small shrouded bodies at the hospital. Gone were his daughters, 5-year-old Joud and 10-year-old Tasnim.

Also gone were his twin 18-month-old sons, Kenan and Neman. Sharif sobbed as he hugged Kenan and said goodbye. Neman's body was still lost beneath the rubble of the six-story tower where the family had sought refuge in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza before it was bombed by Israel.

"They had no time here," Sami Abu Sultan, Sharif's brother, said of the baby boys, a day after the building was destroyed by Israel.

Mahmoud Dahdouh, 16

On October 25, Al Jazeera's livestream caught the chilling moment when its Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, discovered that an Israeli air strike had killed his wife, six-year-old daughter, infant grandson and 16-year-old son, Mahmoud.

Swarmed by TV cameras at the hospital, Dahdouh wept over his teenage son, murmuring, "You wanted to be a journalist."

Mahmoud was a senior at American International High School in Gaza City. Set on becoming an English-language reporter, he spent his time honing camera skills and posting amateur reporting clips on YouTube, Dahdouh said.

A video that Mahmoud filmed days before he died showed charred cars, dark smoke and flattened homes. He and his sister, Kholoud, took turns delivering a monologue, straining to be heard over the wind.

"This is the fiercest and most violent war we have lived in Gaza," Mahmoud said, chopping the air with his hands.

At the end of the clip, the siblings stared straight into the camera.

"Help us to stay alive," they said in unison.