GENEVA: More than 100 children were killed or wounded in Syria last month alone after setting off mines and other unexploded ordnance littering the country after nearly 14 years of civil war, the UN said on Tuesday (Jan 14).
The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF warned that Syria’s girls and boys “continue to suffer the brutal impact of unexploded ordnance at an alarming rate”.
Such ordnance, dubbed UXOs, are explosive weapons such as bombs, shells, grenades, landmines and cluster munitions, that did not explode when they were deployed and remain a risk, sometimes for decades.
In December alone, as Syria was rocked by dramatic political upheaval following the sudden ousting of strongman Bashar al-Assad, UNICEF said it received reports of 116 children killed or injured by UXOs.
That is “an average of nearly four per day”, UNICEF communications manager for emergencies Ricardo Pires told reporters in Geneva, speaking via videolink from Damascus, adding that “this is believed to be an underestimate”.
“Across Syria, children face this lurking, often invisible, and extremely deadly threat.”
Nearly 14 years of brutal civil war, which killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions, has left an estimated 324,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance scattered across Syria, Pires said.
“Over the past nine years, at least 422,000 incidents involving UXOs were reported in 14 governorates across the country,” he said, adding that half of those were “estimated to have ended in tragic child casualties”.
He warned that the danger had been worsened with renewed displacement since rebels last Nov 27 launched the offensive that would overthrow Assad just 11 days later.
Since then, he pointed out, “over a quarter of a million children were forced to flee their homes due to escalating conflict”.
“For these children, and those trying to return to their original areas, the peril of UXO is constant and unavoidable,” he said.
Source: CNA
