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Since the United States and Israel launched an unprovoked war on Iran at the end of February, more than 1,100 youth have been killed or injured in related violence across the Middle East, the United Nations Children’s Fund said Wednesday, calling for a swift diplomatic resolution.
“The situation is becoming catastrophic for millions of children across the region,” UNICEF said in a statement, noting that at least 200 children are reportedly dead in Iran, 91 in Lebanon, four in Israel, and one in Kuwait. “These numbers will likely climb as the violence intensifies and spreads.”
Most of the kids killed in Iran died in what mounting evidence suggests was a US attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab on February 28. That attack killed an estimated 175 people, mostly students ages 7-12, part of an overall death toll that the Iranian government has said exceeds 1,300.
Responding to the school bombing, Gordon Brown, a former UK prime minister who’s now the UN special envoy for global education, argued in a Guardian opinion piece Thursday that “the world will now need stronger mechanisms to ensure accountability,” such as a body complementing the International Criminal Court but specifically for children, “focusing its attention on the bombing of schools, abductions of pupils, and militias that enslave boys and girls.”
With the widening conflict in the Middle East, UNICEF noted Wednesday, “widespread disruption to education has left millions of children out of school across the region, while hundreds of thousands of children have been displaced by unrelenting bombardment.”
In Lebanon, where Israeli attacks are allegedly targeting the Lebanese political and paramilitary group Hezbollah despite a November 2024 ceasefire deal, nearly 800,000 people, including around 200,000 children, have been forced from their homes, according to Mercy Corps. The Lebanese government has said at least 570 people have been killed and 1,444 injured.
“Civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, and water and sanitation systems — upon which children depend to survive — have been attacked, damaged, or destroyed by parties to the conflict,” UNICEF said. “Nothing justifies the killing and maiming of children, or the destruction and disruption of essential services that children depend on.”
“Grave violations against children in armed conflict can constitute violations of international law, including international humanitarian law, and international human rights law,” the UN agency continued.
Across Iran, several United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage sites have also been damaged by the US-Israeli war, which experts worldwide argue violates both the US Constitution and UN Charter.
The UN Security Council, which is currently led by President Donald Trump’s administration, on Wednesday adopted a resolution condemning Iran’s retaliatory attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan — nations that host US military bases — without even mentioning the US-Israeli bombing campaign.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres last Friday demanded a return to negotiations. Trump, who abandoned a previous Iranian nuclear deal during his first term, ditched recent talks with Iran in favor of bombing the country with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who has used war on Iran to again close crossings into the Gaza Strip, or as critics have put it, reinstate a “starvation policy” in the Palestinian territory devastated by Israel’s 29-month genocidal assault.
In addition to reiterating “the secretary-general’s call on parties to the conflict to end the fighting and engage in diplomatic negotiations,” UNICEF on Wednesday urged everyone involved “to take all necessary precautions in the choice of means and methods of warfare to minimize harm to civilians, including by avoiding the use of explosive weapons that disproportionally affect children.”
“The region’s children — all 200 million of them — are counting on the world to act quickly,” the agency concluded.
A Wednesday letter signed by every member of the US Senate Democratic Caucus but Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) — who previously helped Republicans block a war powers resolution intended to halt Trump’s assault on Iran — called for a probe of the Minab school attack and sounded the alarm about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s rhetoric that “only serves to endanger civilians.”
Specifically, Hegseth has said that the US assault on Iran, which they’re calling Operation Epic Fury, would have “no stupid rules of engagement,” and there will be “death and destruction from the sky all day long.”
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