Children in Lebanon have been separated from their families following 24 hours of brutal airstrikes
BEIRUT, 9 April 2026 – Lebanon is facing an escalating crisis, with children newly unaccompanied and separated from their families following a brutal 24 hours of airstrikes.
Save the Children is working to reunite children with their families and is urgently calling for the ceasefire agreement to extend to Lebanon to protect further harm to children.
Yara Hamadeh, Advocacy, Media and Campaign Senior Manager, Save the Children Lebanon Said:
“There is a lot of uncertainty, fear, and worry in people in Lebanon. Many are saying yesterday reminded them of the Beirut explosion in 2020.
“The attacks happened with no warning and were close to many civilian structures.
“Everyone in Lebanon will remember the specific timing and details of what happened yesterday. Within a minute, people can feel everything change. They can see and hear the airstrikes, one after another. The media reported there were over 100 air strikes in under 10 minutes. This happened at peak hour, when the roads were very busy, people were commuting and coming home, children were coming back from school. Many attacks were near schools and hospitals across Beirut all at the same time, in residential areas.
“We are seeing many children separated from their families and loved ones in Lebanon now. Our teams are working around the clock to reunite them, but sadly we know many people have lost their lives in the bombings and afterwards in hospital.
“Save the Children teams are working around the clock to reach people. The staff are very impacted emotionally by what they are seeing and hearing from the children. There is a lot of uncertainty about what is happening next for the children and what their future looks like.
“There are reports of over 200 people killed by the Israeli airstrikes yesterday [2], and we know children are included these numbers that but don’t have an exact figure yet as the number of casualties are still rising. All of this in a country already devastated by the war, when public facilities are already stretched.
“At least 1.2 million people are already displaced across Lebanon, and more than one in ten people in the country are in collective shelters. Many children are facing their 6th year of disrupted education.
“One child keeps telling our staff how they just want things to go back to how it was before. Children want to go back home, to their routines, their families.
“To be a humanitarian worker is the only thing that helps me cope as a Lebanese person. To feel like I am having an impact, that I am helping, I am contributing and supporting, especially children. To have hope that one day we won’t only be responding to crisis. To speak up and raise more visibility about what is happening in Lebanon.”
Save the Children is responding across the region, with programmes in Lebanon, the occupied Palestinian territory, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Lebanon, our teams are distributing hygiene kits, baby kits, mattresses and blankets to families newly displaced by the escalation. In oPt, we are maintaining emergency cash assistance where markets allow and keeping mothers and baby areas open to support infant and maternal nutrition. In Syria, we are scaling up child protection, education, water and sanitation programmes and health/nutrition support for people arriving from Lebanon.
ENDS
[1] According to UN reports https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/04/1167268
[2] According to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.
