500,000 Children Living in Besieged Areas of Syria.

As government forces close in on Eastern Aleppo, the UN has issued a warning that nearly 500,000 children are living in besieged areas across Syria, a figure that has doubled in less than a year.

UNICEF executive director,Anthony Lake, said: “For millions of human beings in Syria, life has become an endless nightmare – in particular for the hundreds of thousands of children living under siege. Children are being killed and injured, too afraid to go to school or even play, surviving with little food and hardly any medicine.

“This is no way to live – and too many are dying.”

UNICEF warned that around 100,000 children are living under siege in Aleppo alone, where thousands are attempting to flee the increased violence.

Across another 16 besieged areas in Syria, hundreds of thousands of children are almost completely cut off from sustained humanitarian aid and basic services.

Volunteers have been forced to build basement playgrounds, schools and hospitals to try to cope with the crisis.

UNICEF renewed its call to lift the sieges across Syria, and to facilitate immediate humanitarian access to all areas.

The call comes as a priest in Aleppo urged Christians around the world to join Syrians in praying for peace.

Father Ibrahim Alsabagh, priest of the Latin parish of Aleppo, told Asia News that civilians are “exhausted” by war, and the city has become “powerless and fearful”.

“We are all waiting to see what will happen in the coming days. Families, west and east, are exhausted; they only want peace in the face of an increasingly difficult life,” he said.

• Pray for Syria, for the millions displaced by the ongoing civil war, and for the hundreds of thousands of children living in daily fear and deprivation across the besieged cities of this nation.
• Pray for the government and rebel forces to agree to allow safe passage for aid convoys into besieged cities in Syria, including Aleppo, especially with the onset of cold winter weather.
• Pray for those working with the children in these cities, for compassion, wisdom and courage as they work to alleviate some of the suffering.
• Pray for the Syrian Church, that they will be encouraged by Christians around the world standing with them in prayer, and that their faith will stand firm and be a beacon of hope for many adults and children in this nation.

Psalm 82 vs 4: “Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.’”

Source: http://www.christiantoday.com/article