More than 4,000 children have been killed or injured in Iran and neighbouring US-allied countries amid the ongoing war in the Middle East, the acting regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at the UN children’s fund (UNICEF), Abdul Fofana, has said in a statement. The figures could not be independently verified.
The statement, published on UNICEF’s website last Friday, said the aftermath of the war lingered in Iran and neighbouring countries. As a result, children were losing their lives and being maimed in their own homes, schools and neighbourhoods — the very places where they should be safest.
Most recently, a two-year-old child was reported killed along with its parents in a US strike on 30 July on a residential building on Keshm Island, off Iran’s southern coast. Two more children were injured, the statement said.
In the statement, the UNICEF official said recent attacks showed that children across the region were paying the highest price for the conflict. In the past five months of war, more than 4,000 children had been killed or injured in six countries in the region, he said. Of these, the number of children killed or injured in Iran alone was more than 2,500, with 386 children killed and another 2,117 injured in the ongoing war there.
The suffering of children at the hands of the parties to the conflict should not be accepted as normal, Fofana said, because children are the worst victims of a conflict they did not start and have no power to stop.
UNICEF has called on the warring parties in the Middle East to abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law. The statement said the ceasefire must be fully respected and implemented, the violence must stop immediately, and every possible step must be taken to ensure the round-the-clock protection of children wherever they are.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report