2m children affected by Syrian conflict

More than 2 million children across the region have been affected by the unrelenting violence, massive population displacement and damage to infrastructure and essential services in the Syrian conflict, said a United Nations report Tuesday. The report released by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said that in areas where the fighting was most intense, access to water had fallen by two-thirds, while one in five schools had been destroyed, damaged or was being used to shelter displaced families. Children were suffering the trauma of seeing family members and friends killed, while being terrified by the sounds and scenes of conflict, said the report. UNICEF said its assistance efforts to affected Syrian children were being threatened by a critical shortage of funding. In December 2012, UNICEF appealed for 195 million U.S. dollars for life-saving assistance for Syrian children and their families. To date, the appeal is less than 20 percent funded, it said.