New Delhi, May 30 -- Majda was destitute. Her husband and eldest son had been killed by Israeli airstrikes. Living in a ragged tent in Gaza with rats and the stench of sewage, she couldn't support her children and feared her daughters would be harassed going to the communal latrine in a camp with hundreds of strangers.

So she made a decision she now deeply regrets. She married off her 13- and 14-year-old daughters to men who promised safety and support.

"I thought I was protecting them," she said. "Fear was slaughtering me."

The devastation that Israel's campaign has wreaked in Gaza has helped fuel an increase in marriages of young girls, according to experts and official data. With almost the entire population driven from their homes,...