SHAFAQNA- Almost 33,000 children have been killed and maimed in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, an average of one child every five hours.
According to Save the Children, the actual number of children killed in Afghanistan in the last two decades is likely to be much higher as the data does not include victims of starvation, disease and poverty.
The aid organisation said the numbers were a devastating insight into the deadly cost of war on children, Middle East Monitor mentioned.
According to Save the Children, more than 4,301 Afghan children died in the last one-and-a-half years alone – between the beginning of 2020 and mid-2021. Out of these, 806 children died in violent incidents.
On August 29, amidst the chaotic evacuation of foreigners from Kabul airport, US forces carried out a drone strike targeting a suspected ISIS-K terrorist near a residential building, which killed at least 10 people, including seven children. This was in retaliation to a terrorist bombing a couple of days before, peoplesdispatch reported.
Nearly 10 million children in Afghanistan are in need of some kind of humanitarian assistance, with half of the children under the age of five facing acute malnutrition this year.
United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres also issued a call on Tuesday for immediate humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, saying that “now more than ever, Afghan children, women and men need the support and solidarity of the international community.”
Hassan Noor, Asia Regional Director for Save the Children, said in a comment: “What remains after 20 years is a generation of children whose entire lives have been blighted by the misery and impact of war.”
Every single child born and raised in Afghanistan has known nothing but conflict, and lived in the certainty that explosives could go off at any moment, or bombs could fall out of the sky.