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UNICEF: 500,000 Children Living Under Siege in Syria

Half a million children are living under siege across Syria, with 100,000 trapped by government forces in eastern Aleppo alone, the United Nations Children’s Fund announced on Sunday.

The children live in sixteen separate besieged areas across the embattled country, UNICEF said.

“For millions of human beings in Syria, life has become an endless nightmare – in particular for the hundreds of thousands of children living under siege. Children are being killed and injured, too afraid to go to school or even play, surviving with little food and hardly any medicine,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. “This is no way to live – and too many are dying.”

An estimated 250,000 people currently live in eastern Aleppo, which the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is keeping under siege with the help of Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and multiple Shiite militias. Syrian troops and their allies have assumed control of approximately 40 percent of the territory, according to Russia’s Defense Ministry.

Bana Alabed, a seven-year-old girl from eastern Aleppo, has put a face on the suffering of the country’s children, publishing dispatches from her besieged city on social media.

Alabed’s house was bombed during the Syrian government’s offensive on Aleppo on Monday, and her family is now on the run, CNN reported.

[Photo: BBC News / YouTube ]