A Syrian child Photo: UNICEF/Khuder Al-Issa
A UNICEF official has come back from the battered Syrian city of Aleppo with descriptions of “haunting images” of children killed by mortars and malnourishment.
“When I was there, nearly 100 mortars fell on west Aleppo in a couple of days […] explosions lit up the night sky and the sounds of war reverberated across the city,” said Hannah Singer, the UNICEF Syria Representative.
Nearly six years of conflict has reduced much of Syria to rubble and ashes as multiple warring parties including the Assad regime and millitant groups like ISIS continue fighting. The Assad regime and its international backers including Russia and Iran have been killing civilians indiscriminately.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon , in Vienna, Austria, acknowledged the international failure to stop bloodshed.
He noted the UN through Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura has been working very hard to resolve the Syrian crisis through an inclusive political solution.
“Unfortunately, during the last six years we have not been able to do that,” he added.
In a poignant statement Thursday, UNICEF’s Ms Singer bemoaned that “even by Syrian standards, the recent bombardment and shelling have been the most intense in Aleppo.”
Around 31,500 people have been displaced from eastern Aleppo in recent days and that based on latest estimates, at least half of them seem to be children, UN says.
Scenes in eastern Aleppo’s Hanano, a neighborhood that was retaken by Government forces on 27 November, are horrible.
“The destruction was massive. Unexploded ordnance scattered everywhere. Apartments were gutted, hospitals nearly destroyed and schools completely damaged except for two that could be rehabilitated.”
So far this year there had been 84 attacks on schools in Syria with at least 69 children killed and many others injured while at school, Ms. Singer underscored: “Even going to school can be a matter of life or death.”
“And I will be forever haunted by the images of the bodies of the two beautiful girls, Hanadi and Lamar, who left for school one morning with pink ribbons in their hair. They never made it. Shrapnel from a mortar hit them on the way and they were killed. Hanadi’s hand still grasped the remains of a chocolate bar,” she added.
Eastern Aleppo is only one 16 besieged areas in the country, where an estimated half a million children remain trapped amid worsening conditions.
Seige – a tactic of war from the Middle Ages – has been used by all sides.
“Where armed forces surround an area and try to starve the other into submission, whilst restricting the movement of persons, including the sick and wounded,” she noted.
An extreme lack of food and medical services that are taking a toll on children with cases of extreme malnutrition resulting in deaths of children.
