{"id":12516,"date":"2016-09-28T09:25:52","date_gmt":"2016-09-28T09:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=12516"},"modified":"2016-09-28T09:28:34","modified_gmt":"2016-09-28T09:28:34","slug":"the-children-of-aleppo-syria-trapped-in-a-killing-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/world-news\/the-children-of-aleppo-syria-trapped-in-a-killing-zone.html","title":{"rendered":"The Children of Aleppo, Syria, Trapped in a Killing Zone"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Children of Aleppo, Syria, Trapped in a Killing Zone<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

The Children of Aleppo, Syria, Trapped in a Killing Zone<\/strong> : They cannot play, sleep or attend school. Increasingly, they cannot eat. Injury or illness could be fatal. Many just huddle with their parents in windowless underground shelters \u2014 which offer no protection from the powerful bombs that have turned east Aleppo into a kill zone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the roughly 250,000 people trapped in the insurgent redoubt of the divided northern Syrian city are 100,000 children, the most vulnerable victims of intensified bombings by Syrian forces and their Russian allies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though the world is jolted periodically by the suffering of children in the Syria conflict \u2014 the photographs of Alan Kurdi\u2019s drowned body and Omran Daqneesh\u2019s bloodied face are prime examples \u2014 dead and traumatized children are increasingly common.<\/span><\/p>\n

The routine in east Aleppo, where shellshocked children are exhumed from rubble and left writhing in bloody clothes on dirty hospital gurneys, is a confluence of Syria\u2019s young population, failed diplomacy and the reality of a war that appears to be worsening after more than five years.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Boys<\/p>\n

\u2018The Worst We Have Seen\u2019<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re trapped, and they have no way of escaping,\u201d said Alun McDonald, a spokesman for the Middle East operations of Save the Children, the international charity. \u201cThat\u2019s one reason we\u2019re seeing such big numbers of child casualties.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The people living in besieged rebel-held areas of Aleppo have shown a high level of resilience, moving schools and hospitals underground for protection. So too, life has continued on the government-held western side of the city, where, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 49 children were killed by rebel mortar fire in July alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

But lately on the eastern side, Mr. McDonald said, \u201cthe bombing has become so intense, with such high-powered bombs, that even underground shelters aren\u2019t safe anymore.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Save the Children has said that at several hospitals and ambulance centers it supports in eastern Aleppo, half of the casualties have been children since the bombings escalated after the collapse of a short-lived cease-fire last week.<\/span><\/p>\n

The battle for control of Aleppo appeared to intensify on Tuesday. Pro-government forces stepped up a new ground offensive, attacking from four directions and advancing in a central area near the city\u2019s ancient citadel, further squeezing the insurgent-held areas.<\/span><\/p>\n

It signifies a new determination on the part of the government and its allies to retake all of the city, but the battle could be long and grinding and take months or even years, international officials warned. Even with militia allies from Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and the Lebanese group Hezbollah, the government has not in the past quickly taken territory and managed to hold it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hanaa Singer, the Unicef representative in Syria, said precise numbers of child casualties in east Aleppo had yet to be determined. Nonetheless, she said by telephone from Damascus, \u201cit\u2019s definitely the worst we have seen for children.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Just a few weeks ago, Ms. Singer said, Unicef planned to publicize how east Aleppo children were enrolled to go back to school, with photos of students walking to class past piles of rubble. That plan was scrapped.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cChildren are not going to school now,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Dire Shortages<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The proportion of children among east Aleppo\u2019s trapped inhabitants is in line with the population of Syria or other countries in the Middle East with large numbers of children and people younger than 25.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the proportion of children who have been killed or wounded in east Aleppo does appear to be higher than in other recent Middle East conflicts, according to Save the Children. In the first year of the war in Yemen, for example, about 28 percent of the civilians killed were children. In the 2014 Gaza war, the United Nations has estimated 35 percent of civilians killed were children.<\/span><\/p>\n

Children in the besieged parts of Aleppo also face dire food and medicine shortages. Surgery and blood transfusions required for treating bomb wounds are, by many accounts, practically impossible now. Medical workers have left children to die on hospital floors for lack of supplies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aid groups estimate that there are only 35 doctors remaining in East Aleppo \u2014 one for every 7,143 people, assuming a population of 250,000 people. By comparison, in New York \u2014 which has the worst doctor-patient ratio of any American city \u2014 it is one for every 912 people. However, some groups say the population of eastern Aleppo is much lower, in the tens of thousands.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Craters<\/p>\n

Nowhere to Go<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

With hundreds of thousands of people killed in Syria since the start of the war in 2011, and half the population displaced, that anyone is even still inhabiting east Aleppo, much less raising children there, may seem surprising.<\/span><\/p>\n

Civil defense workers said many families, mistrustful of government offers of safe passage before the bombing intensified, had elected to stay. The government says rebels are preventing people from leaving. Others said the residents of east Aleppo \u2014 like many other Syrians \u2014 are simply reluctant to abandon their homes and properties even if they could leave.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t want to be refugees,\u201d Ms. Singer said. \u201cIt\u2019s their land, they\u2019re very passionate about their houses. They say, \u2018This is my house, my land.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Powerful, Random and Deliberate<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Unlike in some other smaller-scale sieges of recalcitrant cities in Syria, the Syrian government forces and Russian military have begun dropping extraordinarily potent and not terribly precise \u201cbunker buster\u201d bombs which can obliterate underground shelters, residents and aid workers say.<\/span><\/p>\n

Residents of east Aleppo have also reported the use of incendiary cluster munitions \u2014 bombs that contain hundreds of small bomblets that explode and ignite over a wide area, setting entire neighborhoods aflame.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben Goodlad, the principal weapons analyst at IHS Aerospace, Defense and Security, said in a report that the use of the incendiary munitions alone would appear to violate weapons conventions that ban their use in civilian population centers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The indiscriminate nature of the bombings appears to be of little concern to President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s government and its Russian allies, who have brushed aside Western accusations of war crimes and made it clear that they intend to retake east Aleppo regardless of the casualties and destruction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hannah Stoddart, director of advocacy and communications for War Child, a charity based in London, said Mr. Assad\u2019s government had violated international law by targeting \u201cbuilt-up areas, schools and hospitals, where there\u2019s a much higher chance that children will be hit.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOn top of that, aid access is being blocked,\u201d she said in a statement. \u201cSo if children aren\u2019t killed or injured, they are at risk of starvation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ammar al-Salmo, who leads the east Aleppo unit of the White Helmets, a civil defense group, said in a WhatsApp call that the government\u2019s tactics \u201cbring terror into civilians\u2019 hearts and make it hard for rescuers to help evacuate casualties.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The bombings, he said, have been random and irregular.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes in the early morning so people cannot predict,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s is a revenge campaign against the people who decided to stay in Aleppo.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/strong> : http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/09\/28\/world\/middleeast\/syria-aleppo-children.html<\/span><\/p>\n

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