*SYRIAN SUFFERING STUDENTS*

7 Years of war have taken a high toll on Syria's Students/ children.

BEIRUT : After seven years of war in Syria, the United Nations has one thing to say: *Stop the war on children*.

The numbers speak for themselves.

Of Syria's estimated 10 million children, 8,6 million are now in dire need of assistance, up from about half a million after after the first year of war.

Nearly 6 million children are displaced or living as refugees, and about 2.5 million are out of school.

Over 3 million children are exposed to the hazards of unexploded ordnance and land mines, even in areas where the conflict has died down.

Some 40 percent of those killed by land mines are children.

While the U.N. has verified about 2,500 children killed between 2014 -17, it says the actual numbers are far higher. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has tracked the war since it began, has documented as many as-

19,800 children killed since the conflict began an March 2011. A study published in the Lancer in January shows that children are increasingly bearing the brunt of fighting, making up for-

23 percent of the civilian casualties in 2016, compared to 8.9 percent in 2011.

The latest study reported at least 13,800 children have been killed from 2011 through 2016.

And in the first two months of 2018, more than 1,000 children have been killed or injured according to the U.N.

''The war is going on unabated with an incredible, unacceptably brutal impact upon children,'' Geert Cappelaere UNICEF's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa told the The Associated Press.

''This is a war on children...........Thousands of children have been killed, continue to be killed. Tens of thousands of children have been seriously injured. Many of them are going to carry scars for life.

Thousands of children have been disabled by war.'' [Agencies].