Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters
Cathy Otten, Daily Beast: Can the Children Who Survive the Wars in Syria and Iraq Be Saved?
Psychologists and therapists are struggling to rescue the minds of children from the horrors they’ve experienced in the war zones.
ZAKHO, Iraq — For a long time now, children have been the most pitiful and helpless victims of the savage wars raging in Iraq and Syria. They have been enlisted, indoctrinated, enslaved, raped, murdered, and turned into murderers by the so-called Islamic State; they have been killed by mortar shells and barrel bombs and chemical weapons by a Syrian regime that doesn’t care about “collateral damage.” And now, it appears, they are being targeted directly by Russian airstrikes, although of course the Russians deny that.
On Monday, UNICEF said it had received reports of children being killed and “scores evacuated” from a child and maternal hospital, and two schools attacked in the town of Azaz, Syria, where six children reportedly died. Médecins Sans Frontières reported seven dead and eight missing in an attack on a hospital in Syria’s Idlib province.
Meanwhile, in Iraq nearly 2 million children are in areas under siege or controlled by armed groups, where they are vulnerable to sexual violence, abduction, and forced recruitment, UNICEF told The Daily Beast. In addition, one in five schools in the country are no longer functioning because they’ve been destroyed, damaged, are being used for military purposes, or to house displaced families.
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WNU Editor: These are scars that will truly last a lifetime.
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