GENEVA,
March 28 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - As many as half a
million traumatized Iraqi children will need psychological help as a
result of the U.S.-led war on their country, a top official of the
United Nations children's relief agency UNICEF said Friday, March 28.
U.N.
relief agency staff who were pulled out of Iraq before the unleashing of
the war have been waiting impatiently here for the go-ahead to return to
relieve the plight of the civilian population, with only sparse
information arriving, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Carel
de Rooy, UNICEF representative in Baghdad, admitted he had little
information to go on: "We don't know what we will find when we come
back."
"We
suspect that there might be a major issue of traumatized children,"
he said.
"I
suspect that some half a million children in Basra, Najaf, Kerbala,
Baghdad would possibly need psycho-social rehabilitation once we go back
in."
Only
Iraqi nationals among U.N. staff members have remained in place, working
in tough conditions. A total of 1,000 U.N. staff left Iraq, while 3,400
local personnel remained.
"We
would rather be in Iraq," said de Rooy.
"We
worked very closely with our teams there to the very last moment. We
have a very solid team in place, highly qualified."
He
said aid workers were waiting clearance to go from the United Nations
Security Coordination Unit, adding: "We're ready to move to do our
part to support the population."
UNICEF
has 200 centers in Iraq, including 140 in Kurdistan, the Kurdish-held
northern part of the country that has been outside Baghdad's control
since the 1991 Gulf War, and 60 in Baghdad.
De
Rooy, in daily contact with staff in Baghdad, had no precise information
to date about child victims of bombings.
The
U.N. refugee commission UNHCR was able at this stage to confirm only
that there have already been major refugee movements.
UNHCR
has set up four reception camps for 60,000 on the Iranian side of the
Iranian-Iraqi border in the provinces of Kuzistan, Kermanshah and Ilam.
To
date the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has reported
some 22,000 people displaced near Penjwin, on Iraqi territory.
Information
is likewise sparse concerning the situation in Basra in the south of the
war-ravaged country.
"It's
one of these extremely difficult situations for us because we do not
have anybody on the ground, we do not have any first hand information,
and this is usually a situation where everything is sort of blurred, and
you don't know basically what is going on inside Iraq," UNHCR
spokesman Kris Janowski said.
