Baladi News – Rima Mohammed
As the country enters its sixth year of war, People of Syria have realized that the world powers supporting the Syrian regime intend to expand the Syrian war, which would result in an unfulfilled Syrian generation.
United Nations statistics indicated that one in three Syrian children have known nothing but a lifetime of war, and that they have not had balanced and stabilized family lives. Furthermore, 60% of Syrian children are deprived of learning and education, and 37 thousand children have lost their both parents in war.
Several Ways of Killing Children by the Syrian Regime Forces
Syrian Network of Human Rights (SNHR) documented 19,773 children killed between March 2011 and June 2016 in attacks conducted by the Syrian regime forces with missiles, bombs, toxic gases, snipers, and barrel bombs.
Other children were slaughtered in horrific massacres committed by pro-Syrian regime sectarian militias in Banias, Homs, Jdaidet al-Fadl in Damascus countryside, and areas in Hama and Aleppo country sides.
A report released by the Network in October 2014 entitled "hunting humans", said that 5,307 civilians had been killed by snipers belonging to the Syrian regime and its allied militias during the conflict.
Meanwhile, the famous chemical attack against Damascus Eastern and Western Ghoutas killed hundreds of children in 2013.
A mother remembers in huge agony how her poor kid died in the chemical attack against the city of Muadamiyat al-Sham, saying “I called him several times while suffocating, but he could not answer. Only his eyes were speaking to me, and I can still hear the sound of his last breaths”
Another father describes the last moments of his boy who died in the same massacre, “I brought his bottle of milk to the hospital to feed him. Although I could see foam coming out of his mouth, I expected that he would extend his hand and take the bottle”.
Detention is another Way of Killing Children
SNHR emphasizes that 10,891 Syrian children had experienced detention since March 2011 until June 2016, and 2,716 are still in captive.
Kidnappers affiliated with the Syrian regime security forces use children to extort money from their parents as a way to gain money.
A family tells the bad experience of kidnapping her son by the national defense forces, “After Jdaidet al-Fadl massacre late in 2011, my son was kidnapped and held in solitary confinement at a national defense center in the near Yusuf Al-Azmeh. Then, the forces started negotiating us for days before the release of the boy for 1.5 million Syrian pounds”
It is noteworthy that detaining and killing Syrian children destroys the Syrian future and pushes children to become extremists due to torture in the regime prisons.