GENEVA, August 23, (The Associated Press) – Two UN agencies say the number of registered child refugees fleeing Syria's violence has topped the 1 million mark.
The UN refugee and children's agencies say the grim milestone – half of all the nearly 2 million registered refugees are children – is not just another statistic.
Anthony Lake, head of the UN children's agency known as UNICEF, said in a statement Friday that the 1 millionth child refugee is "a real child ripped from home, maybe even a family, facing horrors we can only begin to comprehend."
Lake and Antonio Guterres, head of the UN refugee agency, say about 7,000 children are among the more than 100,000 killed in the unrest in Syria, which began in March 2011 and later exploded into a civil war.
