Three children have been killed daily in Lebanon over the past two months, reports UNICEF, which is calling for action to end the violence.
More than 200 children have been killed in Lebanon since Israel launched a military campaign focused on its northern neighbor two months ago, the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF said.
On average, three children are killed every day in Lebanon, UNICEF told reporters on Tuesday, as Israel intensified its bombing campaign across the country. He warned that, as in Gaza, despite the appalling toll on Lebanese children, “those with influence” were failing to mount a meaningful response.
“Despite more than 200 children killed in Lebanon in less than two months, a disconcerting trend has emerged: their deaths are met with the inertia of those capable of putting an end to this violence,” the spokesperson told journalists. of UNICEF, James Elder.
“For the children of Lebanon, it has become a silent normalization of horror,” he added.
Elder listed at least six attacks across Lebanon in which children were killed, mostly along with their families, in the last ten days alone.
The UN official noted “frightening similarities” between what is happening to children in Lebanon and those in Gaza, which has been hit by Israeli air raids for more than a year.
At least 17,400 children have been killed in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
“In Lebanon, as has become the case in Gaza, the intolerable is quietly transforming into acceptable. And the terrible slips into the realm of the expected,” said the UNICEF official.
As in the besieged Gaza Strip, hundreds of thousands of children in Lebanon are now homeless; schools remain closed due to widespread attacks; signs of emotional turmoil are evident and no meaningful response has been put in place, Elder said.
According to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, 231 children are among the 3,452 people killed since the start of the war. Among the 14,664 injured, 1,330 are children.
Israel had exchanged low-intensity strikes across its northern border with the armed group Hezbollah, which began firing rockets into Israel in October last year in a show of support for the Iran-linked Hamas group.
The Hamas attack on Israel, which killed around 1,139 people and captured around 250 prisoners, was followed by the Israeli attack on Gaza, which has now killed almost 44,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
However, Israel renewed the intensity of its offensive in Lebanon in late September, after expanding its war objectives to include the destruction of Hezbollah’s infrastructure and the return of 60,000 Israelis to their northern homes.
Israeli authorities say its goal is to dismantle Hezbollah, but the army’s bombings have killed thousands of civilians and at least 200 medical workers. Hezbollah also continued to fire rockets striking deeper into Israeli territory, including Tel Aviv.