War in Lebanon has wounded or killed the equivalent of one classroom of children daily and robbed the remainder of their sense of normalcy since it began two weeks ago, a top official of the UN children's agency said.
According to Lebanese health ministry figures, at least 111 children have been killed and 334 wounded in Israeli strikes on Lebanon since March 2, when Lebanese armed group Hezbollah joined the regional war by firing into Israeli territory. That equals nearly 30 children a day.
"That's a classroom of children every day since the beginning of the war that's either killed or injured in Lebanon," UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Ted Chaiban said in an interview on Tuesday.
Lebanon's child deaths are among 1,200 children killed across the region in recent weeks - nearly 200 in Iran, four in Israel and one in Kuwait.
"They've paid a terrible price. And the first thing we're calling for is a de-escalation, a political way forward to this war," Chaiban told Reuters in Beirut.
Israel says it does not deliberately target civilians and that its warnings give civilians enough time to leave before strikes take place.
STUDENTS MISSING SCHOOL
Israeli strikes have killed more than 900 people in Lebanon since March 2, according to Lebanese data, and the Israeli military's sweeping evacuation orders have displaced more than 1 million people.
Among those are 350,000 children. "It's completely disrupting children's lives. No home, no school, no sense of normalcy," Chaiban said.
Some children have sheltered with their families in the same public schools where they stayed in 2024, during the last war between Hezbollah and Israel.
Children who have attended school for more than five years have already had their learning disrupted by Lebanon's financial collapse in 2019 and the Beirut port explosion and the COVID-19 pandemic the following year.
Chaiban said it was key to find a way to keep up students' learning - both the displaced and those whose schools had been transformed into shelters.
Fatima Mohammad Basharush, a 41-year-old woman displaced from southern Lebanon to a school in Beirut, said her three children loved school but were now getting only a partial education.
"They're not getting the curriculum as they should. They're not getting all the subjects. A child in fifth grade is getting a first grade curriculum. The curriculums are going backwards. We should be doing the opposite - strengthening the curriculum during these circumstances," she said.
UN URGES CIVILIAN INFRASTRUCTURE BE PROTECTED
Many displaced families interviewed by Reuters in recent days said shelters had limited electricity, no heating and not enough bathrooms or running water.
Chaiban said UNICEF was providing water, sanitation kits, warm clothes and blankets to families.
UNICEF has also sent aid to families who have stayed in southern Lebanon, an area the Israeli military has declared a no-go zone and bombed heavily.
Chaiban urged warring parties not to target civilian infrastructure and said the humanitarian notification system, in which aid organizations identify locations of their staff and operations so they are not targeted, was essential.
At least 38 health workers have been killed in Israeli strikes since March 2, according to Lebanon's health ministry. The Israeli military struck a bridge in southern Lebanon last week.
"There is no place for attacking health infrastructure, water infrastructure, schools. They all need to be places that are protected," Chaiban said.
