The number of children living “under siege” in Syria has more than doubled in less than a year to almost 500,000, says UNICEF.
Anthony Lake, the child-focused organisation’s executive director, said children are being killed and injured, and are “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,” he said.
UNICEF says the 500,000 children live in 16 besieged areas across Syria, cut off from sustained humanitarian aid and basic services with an estimated 100,000 children living in eastern Aleppo alone.
It says that in the absence of safe spaces, children are heading underground to basement playgrounds, schools and hospitals. In one besieged area, volunteers linked a series of basements together to create a playground and a park which is visited by an average of 200 children every day. In another area, an underground school is attended by 250 girls.
UNICEF has reiterated its calls for all parties to lift sieges in Syria and to allow “immediate, unconditional and sustained” humanitarian access to every part of the country.
