Kids speak out about Middle East

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Kids talk about what life's like for their families in Gaza and Israel

Children in the UK have been speaking out about how the recent violence in the Middle East is affecting friends and families in Israel and Gaza.

Over the past 19 days, up to 1,000 people are thought to have been killed in the fighting - nearly all of them in Gaza and at least 350 of them children.

Omar and Stephanie, who have family in Gaza and Israel, told Newsround what life's like for kids out there.

And both of them spoke of their dream of peace between the two sides.

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It's 19 days since Israel's army began bombing Gaza saying it wanted to protect its people from rocket attacks.

Omar's family live in Gaza and he said he hadn't been able to speak to many of them since the conflict began.

"It's really worrying because we don't know if they're still alive," he said.

Until a year ago, Stephanie lived in Israel - where a lot of her family still are - and she remembers what it was like to be under attack - something children on both sides of the border have to deal with every day.

"Israel has lots of attacks - I remember when I was in Israel, there was the alarm going off loads of times and we had to drop everything and run to the shelters.

'Really scary'

"For Children, it's even harder. When they go to school, there could be an alarm going off whenever.

"When you hear the alarm go off, you need to drop everything and hide and they're not with their parents or anything. You don't know what to do. It's really scary."

There has been trouble between Israel and Gaza for years

Over the past few weeks, nearly 1,000 people have died in the violence, including loads of Omar's relatives.

"We lost 15 of our family members," he said. "Four of our aunts and uncles and the rest of the children, 11 children, 11 of our cousins."

The fighting is all to do with who has the right to live where and it's a problem that's been causing trouble in this part of the world for years.

World leaders are doing all they can to try to help end the latest violence, but there's no sign of that happening yet.

Peace and harmony

Understandably, Stephanie says her family just want the fighting to stop.

"Nobody likes wars and I just want peace again," she said. "They all want it to finish."

Omar added: "I just wish that Jewish people and Muslims can all just be friends and play in peace and harmony, just like me and my friend Joseph.

"He's Jewish and I'm British Palestinian and we hang around together, go to the park and play sports together. And what I'm thinking is that if two kids can sort out problems with religions and wars why can't leaders to the same?"