Ms Hannah Singer, the UNICEF Syria Representative has given a grave account of the dire situation in war-ravaged Aleppo, saying there is no safe place left for children in the city.
Returning from a mission to Aleppo, the UNICEF official described “haunting images” of children killed by mortars and malnourishment, saying that the terrible situation “continues to plummet to even greater lows”.
“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.
“Even by Syrian standards, the recent bombardment and shelling have been the most intense in Aleppo,” the UNICEF Syria Representative said in a statement.
She explained that some 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.
Painting a grave picture of the scene in eastern Aleppo’s Hanano, a neighbourhood that was retaken by Syrian Government forces on Nov. 27, Singer said: “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.”
She noted that so far on 2016, there had been 84 attacks on schools in Syria with at least 69 children killed and many others injured while at school.
According to her, 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 said.
Singer added that while the world’s attention was on Aleppo, eastern Aleppo was only one with 16 besieged areas in the country, where an estimated 500,000 children remain trapped amid worsening conditions.
“Besiegement – 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.
She further noted extreme lack of food and medical services that were taking a toll on children with cases of extreme malnutrition resulting in deaths of children.
Singer emphasised that for the situation to improve and humanitarian plight to be alleviated, the fighting must stop.
She said that UNICEF had been distributing winter clothes, supplying water and fuel, and providing nutrition supplements immunisations, psychosocial support and mine-risk education.
She, however, called on all parties to the conflict to stop employing sieges, attacking civilians, schools and hospitals as well as to stop recruiting and using children in armed forces, stressed that until that happened, efforts of humanitarian workers and agencies would not amount to much.
“We can make a difference but it’s never enough. Let’s be clear, as long as the violence continues, children in Syria will suffer,” she said. (NAN)