SAFA - Health workers in Turkey’s central province of Kayseri paid tribute to 16,277 Palestinian children killed during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza by displaying their names on a huge cloth banner.

The initiative took place on Saturday evening at Gaza Children’s Park in the Talas district, where healthcare workers gathered to commemorate the children killed since the Israeli  genocidal war began in October 2023.

The names were printed on a banner measuring 39 feet long and nearly 10 feet wide, according to Sondakika News Agency. 

The organizers said the names represented only part of the more than 21,500 Palestinian children reportedly killed in Gaza during the nearly three-year Israeli genocidal war.

Doctor Isa Uzum, speaking on behalf of the group, said many Palestinian children had been killed without even having the opportunity to know members of their own families.

“Many children in Palestine were killed before they even had the chance to know their family members,” Uzum said, adding that children in Gaza have been trying to sleep to the sound of bombardment rather than lullabies.

“We cannot remain silent while children are dying of hunger in Gaza,” he said, pledging that the group would continue doing everything it could to draw international attention to the suffering of Palestinian children.

The initiative comes amid a staggering death toll among children in Gaza. Reports citing figures from Gaza’s Government Media Office said in August that more than 21,500 children had been killed since the Israeli war began.

Israeli attacks have continued to claim civilian lives, including children, despite a ceasefire agreement that took effect in October 2025.

The Palestinian death toll among children has continued to rise since the ceasefire, with recent reports documenting children killed in Israeli attacks across different parts of the Gaza Strip in September. Among the reported victims were an 8-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy.

By displaying thousands of children's names on a single banner, the Turkish healthcare workers sought to put individual identities behind the staggering casualty figures and remind the public that each number represents a child with a family, memories and a life cut short by the war.