Syria's 10-year-long civil war has killed or wounded almost 12,000 children and left millions out of school in what could have repercussions for years to come in the country, the U.N. children's agency said. The grim statistics were released in a UNICEF report ahead of the 10th anniversary of Syria's conflict that began in mid-March 2011. The war has killed nearly half a million people, wounded more than a million and displaced half the country's population, including more than 5 million refugees. Above, members of the Syrian Civil Defense (White Helmets) carry a child injured in a reported Russian airstrike on Marayan village in the northwestern Idlib governorate on November 22, 2019.
Image Credit: AFP
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Over the past year, the situation has been compounded by a severe economic and financial crisis and the spread of coronavirus. Medical facilities have been hard hit by a devastating war that left large parts of Syria destroyed. Above, members of the Civil Defence rescue children after an airstrike in Aleppo in 2014.
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One in six young Syrians said at least one of their parents was killed or seriously injured. "This has been a decade of savage loss for all Syrians. For young people, in particular, the last ten years have been marked by loss of loved ones, loss of opportunities and loss of control over their future," said Robert Mardini, the ICRC's Geneva-based director-general. Above, Syrian men carrying babies make their way through the rubble of destroyed buildings following an airstrike on the rebel-held Salihin neighbourhood of the northern city of Aleppo on Sept. 11, 2016.
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The reported numbers of children displaying psychosocial distress symptoms doubled in 2020, as continued exposure to violence, shock and trauma had a significant impact on children's mental health, with short and long-term implications, it said. Above, a Syrian child poses atop a stack of neutralised shells at a metal scrapyard on Maaret Misrin town's outskirts in the northwestern Idlib province.
Image Credit: AFP
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In this still taken from video provided by Aleppo Media Centre, a child sits in an ambulance apparently after being pulled out of a building hit by an airstrike.
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A father cries while holding his dead child in front of Dar al Shifa Hospital in Aleppo, Syria, Oct. 4, 2012.
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This image of Alan Kurdi’s tiny body washed up on a beach in Turkey led to an outpouring of concern for Syrian refugees in 2015.
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UNICEF also said that since the conflict began, more than 1,300 educational and medical facilities and personnel have come under attack. The agency said that nearly 2.45 million children in Syria and an additional 750,000 Syrian children in neighboring countries are out of school, 60% of them boys. It said the situation for many children and families remains precarious, with nearly 90% of children in need of humanitarian assistance, a 20% increase in the past year alone.
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On 15 March 2018 in Beit Sawa, eastern Ghouta. a boy on crutches walks towards Hamourieh where an evacuation exit from eastern Ghouta has been opened.
Image Credit: UNICEF
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Ahmad Hamra, is pictured with his children outside of a tent at an internally displaced Syrian camp, in northern Aleppo near the Syrian-Turkish border, Syria.
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A Syrian child holds onto at a fence at the al-Hol camp in al-Hasakeh governorate in northeastern Syria.
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A Syrian child fleeing the war is lifted over border fences to enter Turkish territory illegally, near the Turkish border crossing at Akcakale in Sanliurfa province in 2015.
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Young children look at a member of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) after leaving the Islamic State (IS) group's last holdout of Baghouz, in Syria's northern Deir Ezzor province in 2019.
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In this file photo taken on March 25, 2015, a Kurdish Syrian woman walks with her child past the ruins of the town of Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab.
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A Syrian displaced boy holds a chicken, as he sits outside his family tent, at a refugee camp in the town of Bar Elias, in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.
Image Credit: AP
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A Syrian woman walks with her children while in a commercial district in Syria's northeastern city of Qamishli on March 9, 2021.
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Displaced people fleeing violence on the outskirts of Sinjar mountain, near the Syrian border town of Elierbeh of Al-Hasakah Governorate, Iraq.
Image Credit: REUTERS
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