Photo: On 20 November 2016, a group of children push a cart trying to sell some radish in Al-Sha’ar neighbourhood in Aleppo, Syria. Food and other basic commodities are running out at one of East Aleppo’s once busiest markets. Photo: UNICEF/Zayat
Perhaps, no other recent conflict has inflicted as much pain on children as the festering Syrian war has over the past more than five years. Yet, there is no coherent international effort to put an end to the conflagration in the Arab country.
This week, in yet another appalling account of the “merciless” Syrian war, the United Nations said 500,000 children live in 16 besieged areas across the country, “almost completely cut off from sustained humanitarian aid and basic services.”
In eastern Aleppo, the scene of intense fighting and indiscriminate targetting of civilians, the UNCEF estimates 100,000 children are living under siege.
“Children are being killed and injured, too afraid to go to school or even play, surviving with little food and hardly any medicine. This is no way to live – and too many are dying,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake.
According to the world body, some communities have received little to no aid in nearly two years.
“For millions of human beings in Syria, life has become an endless nightmare – in particular for the hundreds of thousands of children living under siege,” Lake said.
In the absence of safe spaces, children are turning to basement playgrounds, schools and hospitals to continue playing, learning and, when necessary, seeking medical care.
In one besieged area, a group of volunteers built a playground and a park by linking a series of basements.
On average, around 200 children come to this playground every day. In another besieged area, an underground school provides 250 girls with the chance to keep learning.
Meanwhile, a top United Nations humanitarian official today urged the 15-member body to act now and end the protracted conflict.
“I am more or less at my wit’s end […] I had hoped to say today that last month I put it all on the table and frankly it’s still just as terrible and leave it at that – shame on us all for not acting to stop the annihilation of eastern Aleppo and its people and much of the rest of Syria too,” the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Stephen O’Brien, said in a Council briefing held at the UN Headquarters in New York.
“All the facts and reports I gave last month have not, not one of them, been changed, qualified, denied or proven wrong, by any one of you or anyone beyond this room,” he added.
O’Brien, also the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, said that he has long called for a lifting of all sieges, which have become one of the most prevalent and insidious aspects of this “merciless” conflict.
In a separate statement, O’ Brien reported that up to 16,000 people have fled fighting in the eastern neighbourhoods of Syria’s Aleppo city over the past few days.
“I am extremely concerned about the fate of civilians as a result of the deeply alarming and chilling situation unfolding in Aleppo city,” he said.
According to United Nations, Intensified ground fighting and indiscriminate aerial bombardment over the past few days in eastern Aleppo has reportedly killed and injured scores of civilians, he said.
“There are no functioning hospitals left, and official food stocks are practically finished in eastern Aleppo,” added O’Brien.
