UNICEF: Five million Iraqi children need urgent assistance

Describing the critical situation for children in Iraq, the United Nations Children's Fund announced that more than a thousand Iraqi children have been killed since 2014 and the escalation of violence in the country.

A UNICEF report was released on Thursday, July 2, warning that Iraqi children are trapped in an endless cycle of violence and increasing poverty, with five million children in the country now in need of urgent assistance.

The report states that 1,075 Iraqi children have been killed in the past three years, 152 of which have occurred in the past six months. The violence during this period has also caused more than 4,650 Iraqi children to be separated from their families.

Part of the UNICEF report refers to the educational conditions of Iraqi children, stating that about 1.2 million children have dropped out of school and more than three million attend school irregularly.

The report is accompanied by statements from Peter Hawkins, UNICEF's representative in Iraq, who called the Iraq war one of the "most brutal" wars in modern history.

Referring to the violence in the western areas of Mosul, which are still under the control of ISIS militants, Mr. Hawkins described the dire conditions of the children there who have been taken hostage.

According to him, children are being deliberately targeted and killed in order to punish families who are trying to escape the violence, so that in less than two months, 23 children have been killed and 123 others injured in western Mosul alone.

ISIS militants have lost many of the towns and villages they had captured following attacks by US-backed Iraqi forces. They are on the verge of complete defeat in Mosul, the city in northern Iraq that ISIS had claimed as its seat of power.

Source: Radio Farda