By IANS,
Geneva : More than two million children have been affected by the violence, massive population displacement and damage to infrastructure and essential services in Syria, Unicef said Tuesday.
It said that in areas where 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, Xinhua reported.
Children were suffering the trauma of seeing family members and friends killed, while being terrified by the sounds and scenes of conflict, the report said.
Unicef said its assistance efforts to affected Syrian children were being threatened by a critical shortage of funding.
In December 2012, the UN agency had appealed for $195 million for life-saving assistance for Syrian children and their families. To date, the appeal is less than 20 percent funded, it said.