5.5m children affected by war in Syria, says UN

A Syrian man cries while holding the body of child who was killed following a government air strike in Aleppo.

The number of children affected by Syria’s war doubled in the past year to 5.5 million, the UN said, a heartrending picture of an entire generation on the verge of being lost.

And in a report entitled Under Siege — the devastating impact on children of three years of conflict in Syria, UNICEF warned that the situation was likely to get worse.

“Cut off from aid, living in rubble and struggling to find food, many Syrian children have been left without protection, medical care or psychological support, and have little or no access to education.

“In the very worst cases, children and pregnant women have been deliberately wounded or killed by snipers,” the report said.

One million children are trapped in areas under siege or that are hard to reach with humanitarian assistance, and two million children are in need of psychological support or treatment, the report said.

“For Syria’s children, the past three years have been the longest of their lives. Must they endure another year of suffering,” asked UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake.

Hamida Lasseko, UNICEF’s deputy representative in Syria, said witnessing children’s suffering and trauma in Syria was heart wrenching.

“This has to come to an end… How much the children are paying as a price is really unacceptable,” she told reporters in Geneva.

Lasseko described a 5-year-old girl whom she and UNICEF workers had found wandering around Homs last month.

“Her mother had died in shelling the day before.” So many children “have gone through horrific stories,” she said, adding that, “as a mother, when I look at them, I really feel it.”