'We are really seeing a mounting death toll among children'

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00:00There's more than 1,000 people have been killed and 6,000 injured according to the figures from

00:07the Ministry of Health last night. Unfortunately, during this past week, we had one day where there

00:13was 50 children alone were killed. So we're really seeing a mounting death toll among children and

00:20we believe that this might be actually higher given that many children and their families

00:26remain under the rubble in different parts of the country. The bombardments continued again

00:34last night and since Friday, we've seen an escalated increase in the conflict around

00:40Beirut, especially in the southern suburbs. So we have seen tens of thousands of people on the move

00:46and cumulatively this week, we believe that now there is more than 200,000 people

00:52that have moved. But the government this morning is saying that 1 million people have been impacted.

00:57We still see tens of thousands of people who are searching for shelter.

01:02As an emergency measure, the schools have been opened across the country to create

01:10temporary shelters. So now we have over 700 shelters and over 500 of these are already full.

01:18So we're desperately looking for more places exactly as your report highlighted, speaking to

01:22some of these civilians and especially the mothers and children looking for somewhere safe to go.

01:28It's been a very, very challenging number of days for frontline workers and humanitarian workers and

01:35indeed government social services over the past one week trying to provide emergency support to

01:42so many hundreds of thousands of people who are in such desperate need for food, for water,

01:47for shelter, for clothing, blankets, mattresses, absolutely everything. Even on Friday night,

01:54we still had people who were getting evacuation orders at 2 and 3 in the morning. So they were

02:00forced to pull their children from their beds to seek safety. So you can imagine that these

02:06families need absolutely everything. So people are in dire need of supplies.

02:11Are there enough food, water and medical supplies going around at the moment?

02:16Well, of course, given that the conflict has been ongoing for some time now, we had

02:21pre-positioned and prepared supplies. We had put them across our warehouses in the different parts

02:28of the country. But just the sheer scale and speed of the displacement that we saw over the past six,

02:36seven days has been really something unprecedented and is depleting the resources very, very,

02:44quickly and putting services really under strain. So in particular, I would like to highlight the

02:52health situation. UNICEF flew in 100 metric tons of essential lifesaving medical supplies last week

02:59and we're now trying to get in another 25 metric tons of medical supplies this week. But it's very,

03:06very challenging given the limited number of aircraft coming into Lebanon at this time.

03:12But we desperately need to bring in more and pre-position more and really lack the resources

03:16to do so. In addition, we also have the hospitals that are really flooded with injured patients.

03:25We have hospitals that have been damaged that are being forced to evacuate their patients because

03:29of the areas where they're living are now dangerous. So we need to provide supplies.

03:35Mobile health teams need to support all of these people who have been displaced and now who are

03:40living, some of them spending their third night out in the open last night. So really a race

03:46against the clock to deliver a comprehensive scaled up emergency response. In addition,

03:52we have the water situation where we've seen this week many water pumping stations have been

03:57destroyed, water infrastructure being destroyed. And we have towns and cities that have now

04:04massively increased pressure on their systems to provide clean drinking water to millions of people.

04:10In some cases, as UNICEF, we've been supporting the water infrastructure in the country for a long

04:16time. And it's now difficult for us to provide fuel and to repair these locations due to the

04:24nature of the conflict and inability to access safe routes to go to these locations. So it is

04:31very, very challenging. In addition, this is September. It should be a time of year when

04:36children are being welcomed back to start the new school year. And now instead they're entering

04:41schools as internally displaced people with absolutely nothing. And their learning has again

04:48been interrupted. And this is coming, unfortunately, on the back of a crisis in Lebanon over the last

04:54number of years of the economic meltdown. And of course, with the Syrian refugee crisis, many

05:02refugees, over 1 million, have been here for more than a decade. So it's putting everything

05:08on a cumulative crisis that is now at risk of really becoming a humanitarian catastrophe

05:14that will have implications far beyond the borders of Lebanon.

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