(Damascus) UNICEF warned on Thursday that 3.7 million children in areas affected by the February 6 earthquake in Syria were facing increasing threats, following a visit by its executive director to the country.
“Children in Syria have already endured untold horror and suffering,” UN Children’s Fund Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement.
“The 3.7 million children in Syria affected by the earthquake face a dramatic accumulation of dangers,” she added.
“Now these earthquakes and their aftershocks have not only destroyed more homes, schools and places where children can play, but they have also shattered any sense of security for so many children and families among most vulnerable,” she added.
The earthquake killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey and Syria. The death toll for Syria is nearly 6,000 dead.
Since then, more or less violent aftershocks have been felt from time to time.
The director of UNICEF notably went to Aleppo, Syria’s second city under government control, hard hit by the earthquake.
UNICEF has appealed for $172.7 million to provide immediate relief to 5.4 million people affected by the earthquake, including 2.6 million children.
According to the UN, 8.8 million Syrians have been affected by the earthquake.
The director of UNICEF also mentioned “the increased threat of contagious, contact-borne and water-borne diseases for displaced families”.
The quake shook a country already devastated by a civil war since 2011 that claimed nearly half a million lives, displaced millions and ravaged infrastructure.
Several schools in the affected areas served as shelters for survivors of the earthquake, which notably destroyed water sanitation facilities already damaged by the war, posing the risk of an increased spread of diseases, such as cholera which has been spreading since September in Syria.