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Geneva:
The UN said Tuesday that over 200 children have been killed in Lebanon since Israel escalated attacks targeting Hezbollah in September.
“Despite more than 200 children killed in Lebanon in less than two months, a disconcerting pattern has emerged: their deaths are met with inertia from those able to stop this violence,” James Elder, spokesman for the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, told reporters.
“Over the last two months in Lebanon, an average of three children have been killed every single day,” he said.
“Many, many more have been injured and traumatised,” he added, highlighting that in the past two months, more than 1,100 children had been hurt.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in October last year in support of the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza.
Since September, Israel has conducted bombing campaigns in Lebanon primarily targeting Hezbollah strongholds, though some strikes have hit areas outside the Iran-backed group’s control.
Since the clashes began with Hezbollah attacks on Israel, more than 3,510 people in Lebanon have been killed, according to authorities in the country, with most fatalities recorded since late September.
Elder said that since the Gaza war erupted after the Hamas attacks of October 7 last year, at least 231 children had been killed in Lebanon.
‘Chilling similarities’
“We must hope humanity never again witnesses the ongoing level of carnage of children in Gaza, though there are chilling similarities for children in Lebanon,” he said.
He pointed to the hundreds of thousands of children made homeless in Lebanon, and “disproportionate attacks, of which many frequently hit infrastructure children rely on”.
“Medical facilities are being attacked and health workers are being killed at an increasing speed,” he said.
He highlighted that as of November 15, more than 200 health workers had been killed and 300 injured, according to Lebanese authorities.
“The most worrying parallel to Gaza,” he said, was that “the escalation of children killed is eliciting no meaningful response from those with influence”.
“In Lebanon, much the same as has become the case in Gaza, the intolerable is quietly transforming into the acceptable. And the appalling is slipping into the realm of the expected.”
20 peacekeepers injured
The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon meanwhile decried “numerous hits on its assets and personnel”.
“This has been definitely a very difficult moment,” UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti said, lamenting that the force had been “deliberately attacked by IDF (the Israeli military) in recent months”.
In the past 13 months, it had suffered “162 impacts, with more than one-third in the less than two months”, he told reporters by video from Beirut.
“More than 20 peacekeepers have been injured so far,” he said.
Tenenti said UNIFIL “towers and some of our positions have been attacked and heavily damaged”.
He stressed that UNIFIL would remain. “We are still there in all our 50 positions,” he said.
“It’s important to stay, to be there, to monitor, to assist as much as we can the population in south Lebanon.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
