This article was originally published in Common Dreams under Creative Commons 3.0 license. Read the original article. Contact: editor@commondreams.org
By Jon Queally
As the broader war unleashed in the Middle East this week by the joint attack on Iran by Israel and US forces continued to escalate and intensify on Friday, advocates for children warn that young people caught in the middle of the fighting are paying the highest price for the war of choice launched by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
More than half a million people have fled their homes in southern Lebanon as Israel unleashed a deadly barrage of bombings overnight and into Friday, adding to a death toll estimated to be more than 130 people this week and following a mass evacuation order by the Israeli government on Thursday amid a wider regional war backed by the US military.
US bombing of Iran also intensified overnight following threats by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Thursday that “we have just begun.”
From Lebanon to Iran this week, since Trump launched an unprovoked attack on Iran over the weekend, UNICEF estimates that over 190 children have been killed across the Middle East in the escalated fighting. “This includes 181 children in Iran, seven in Lebanon, three in Israel, and one child in Kuwait,” said the group.
Israeli forces bombed numerous towns and areas around Beirut on Friday, according to dispatches from the Lebanese National News Agency (NNA), targeting the towns of Al-Majadel, Al-Duwayr, Buday, and others.
See Also: Middle East Conflict Escalates as 52 Killed in Israeli Strike on Beirut After Hezbollah Missile Fire
The United Nations human rights office warned Friday that Israel’s “blanket displacement orders” and bombardment of Beirut and its outlying suburbs was delivering “more misery to civilians” in those areas, including children and their families.
“In all, hundreds of thousands have now been affected by these Israeli displacement orders,” said the OHCHR in a statement. “Their breadth makes them very difficult for the population to comply with and therefore brings into question their effectiveness, a requirement under international humanitarian law, and risks amounting to prohibited forced displacement.”
UN human rights chief Volker Türk on Friday denounced Israel’s large -scale evacuation orders, saying, “These blanket, massive displacement orders we are talking here about hundreds and thousands of people. This raises serious concern under international humanitarian law, and in particular when it comes to issues around forced transfer.”
In a Thursday statement, Save the Children called for the warring parties, as well as the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—to deploy every diplomatic tool at their disposal to bring “an end to hostilities” and guarantee “adherence to international humanitarian law to protect the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of children across the region.”
Save the Children’s Latifa Mattar said that children living in these nations across the region “had no say in this conflict and yet, they are paying the price. Children are now living in fear. We are hearing of children too scared to sleep, families sheltering indoors, and schools shuttered at a time when children need routine and safety most.”
“We are calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities,” added Mattar. “Every hour of continued conflict is another hour a child spends in fear. The international community must act now—deploy every diplomatic tool available to end the conflict, demand compliance with international humanitarian law, and ensure that children are protected. Upholding the laws of war is an obligation, not a choice. There must be a return to good-faith diplomacy before the harm to this generation becomes irreversible.”
Al-Jazeera correspondent Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, warned that the humanitarian crisis in the city and surrounding areas is rapidly worsening, with people seeking shelter on nearly every street corner.
“There aren’t enough schools to shelter the hundreds of thousands of people who were forced to flee their homes after Israel’s forced displacement threat for Beirut’s southern suburbs [Thursday],” Khodr reported. “People are telling us: ‘We are not animals; we are human beings, our children are cold.’”
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