Lebanon war leaves a classroom of children hurt or dead every day, UN says

War in Lebanon has wounded or killed the equivalent of one classroom of children daily and robbed the remainder of their sense of normalcy since it began two weeks ago, a top official of the UN children’s agency says.

According to Lebanese health ministry figures, at least 111 children have been killed and 334 wounded in Israeli strikes on Lebanon since March 2, when Lebanese terror group Hezbollah joined the regional war in support of its sponsor Iran and began firing rockets and drones into Israeli territory. That equals nearly 30 children a day.

“That’s a classroom of children every day since the beginning of the war that’s either killed or injured in Lebanon,” UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Ted Chaiban says.

Lebanon’s child deaths are among 1,200 children killed across the region in recent weeks — nearly 200 in Iran, four in Israel and one in Kuwait.

“They’ve paid a terrible price. And the first thing we’re calling for is a de-escalation, a political way forward to this war,” Chaiban tells Reuters in Beirut.

Israel says it does not deliberately target civilians and that it takes multiple steps, including early evacuation warnings, to mitigate harm to civilians before strikes on terror targets take place.