https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/04/children-us-israel-iran-war-middle-east
 |
| Displaced children arrange a bouquet of flowers outside their tent in a carpark in Beirut’s waterfront area. Photograph: Ibrahim Amro/AFP/Getty Images |
Unicef’s representative to Lebanon, Marcoluigi Corsi, warned last month that displacement would have lasting effects on the children. “This relentless cycle of bombardment and displacement is severely compounding their psychological scars, embedding deep-seated fear and threatening profound, long-term emotional harm,” said Corsi.
Ahmed said he has already seen some of these effects in his own children. When Israeli jets break the sound barrier or bomb Beirut, his son starts to run, trying to hide from a bomb he thinks will land on him.
Ahmed himself is exhausted. He had to leave his wife and 17-year-old daughter in the hospital in Tyre after they were injured in the bombing of their house. He shows a picture of his comatose wife in a hospital bed, counting her ailments: Skull fractured in 33 places, internal bleeding, spinal injuries.
“They say she won’t make it,” Ahmed said, looking at his children. “The children are kept busy now, they’re playing. But when they come home and don’t find their mother there, it will be a disaster.”
Deaths, injuries and mourning in Palestine
Despite a ceasefire which is now more than five months old, health officials in Gaza say at least 50 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the Iran conflict began more than a month ago. The number of child fatalities is unclear but on 29 March Israeli airstrikes on checkpoints killed at least six Palestinians, including a girl, according to local rescue services.
The Gaza Strip has not recovered from 23 months of Israeli bombardment, which killed tens of thousands of people and destroyed hospitals and schools in what a UN investigation found to be a genocide. Up until October last year, an average of at least one Palestinian child was being killed every hour. The number of children killed by Israeli forces in its war on Gaza surpassed 20,000 late last year, according to Save the Children.
While the Iran war did not open a new front in Gaza, it has deepened insecurity and resulted in an intensification of ongoing Israeli military operations... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/04/children-us-israel-iran-war-middle-east