USAID launches latest clean-up for Vietnam War-era Agent Orange site

Yahoo – AFP, April 20, 2019

A Vietnamese soldier stands next to a sign warning of toxic hazard at Bien Hoa
air base, on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City (AFP Photo/Thomas WATKINS)

Hanoi (AFP) - The US launched on Saturday a $183 million clean-up at a former Vietnam storage site for Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant used in their bitter war which years later is still blamed for severe birth defects, cancers and disabilities.

Located outside Ho Chi Minh City, Bien Hoa airbase -- the latest site scheduled for rehabilitation after Danang airbase's clean-up last year -- was one of the main storage grounds for Agent Orange and only hastily cleared by soldiers near the war's end more than four decades ago.

US forces sprayed 80 million litres (21 million gallons) of Agent Orange over South Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 in a desperate bid to flush out Viet Cong communist guerrillas by depriving them of tree cover and food.

The spillover from the clearing operation is believed to have seeped beyond the base and into ground water and rivers, and is linked to severe mental and physical disabilities across generations of Vietnamese -- from enlarged heads to deformed limbs.

At Bien Hoa, more than 500,000 cubic metres of dioxin had contaminated the soil and sediment, making it the "largest remaining hotspot" in Vietnam, said a statement from the US development agency USAID, which kicked off a 10-year remediation effort on Saturday.

The dioxin amounts in Bien Hoa are four times more than the volume cleaned up at Danang airport, a six-year $110 million effort which was completed in November.

"The fact that two former foes are now partnering on such a complex task is nothing short of historic," said the US ambassador to Vietnam, Daniel Kritenbrink, at Saturday morning's launch attended by Vietnamese military officials and US senators.

Hanoi says up to three million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, and that one million suffer grave health repercussions today -- including at least 150,000 children with birth defects.

An attempt by Vietnamese victims to obtain compensation from the United States has met with little success. The US Supreme Court in 2009 declined to take up the case while neither the US government nor the manufacturers of the chemical have ever admitted liability.

While US officials have never admitted direct links between Agent Orange and birth defects, USAID on Saturday also issued a "memorandum of intent" to work with government agencies to improve the lives of people with disabilities in seven Vietnamese provinces.

British troops suffer higher rates of PTSD: study

Yahoo – AFP, October 8, 2018

Rates of probable post-traumatic stress disorder among current and former serving
British military personnel reached six percent in 2014/16, up from four percent in
2004/2006, a new study found (AFP Photo/BEN SKLAR)

London (AFP) - Members of the British armed forces are suffering increased rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), principally among those who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, new research revealed Monday.

Rates of probable PTSD among current and former serving military personnel reached six percent in 2014/16, up from four percent in 2004/2006, the King's College London study said.

The results of a major cohort study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, showed frontline soldiers were most affected, but so too were those who have since left the military.

Some 17 percent of ex-military personnel who had combat roles in Iraq or Afghanistan reported symptoms suggesting probable PTSD, compared to six percent of those who were deployed in support roles, such as logistics.

The overall rate of probable PTSD for veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars was nine percent, compared to five percent of those who did not deploy to those conflicts.

Meanwhile the rate of probable PTSD among currently serving personnel was five percent, close to the rate among the general population.

"For the first time we have identified that the risk of PTSD for veterans deployed in conflicts was substantially higher than the risk for those still serving," said Dr Sharon Stevelink from King's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN).

Professor Nicola Fear, also from the IoPPN, said: "One possible reason PTSD is more common among veterans may be that personnel who are mentally unwell are more likely to leave the armed forces."

The study, funded by the defence ministry, was carried out by the King's Centre for Military Health Research.

It began in 2003 and this phase included 8,093 participants, 62 percent of whom had been in Iraq, where British troops were deployed 2003-2011 or Afghanistan (2001-2014).

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 "Recalibration of Free Choice"–  Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Loose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth,  4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical)  8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version)

“…  8 - The End of War

The last one is the best. For thousands of years on this planet, Human Beings have warred with each other. If you take a look at the reasons they warred with each other, you will quickly see there aren't any good ones - land, resources, greed. Those are not reasons. That is a description of old energy. Those are not reasons. Reasons would be perhaps defense against an aggressor. But what if there is no longer the consciousness of the aggressor?

When I appeared in my partner's life more than 20 years ago, I said to him privately that the first messages we're going to give will be unbelievable. There would be laughter. We told him that Human nature and consciousness itself would change, and that the seeds of peace would be planted and there would come a time where there is no more war. Indeed, the laughter was great because humans look at history and they see patterns based on an absolute energy called Human Nature. "Impossible! There always has to be war. There always has been. Therefore, there always will be." This is you, in a box, in a black and white potential, where you can only see the black and white of what is and the black and white of what has been. You have no idea the shades of color that are there in your consciousness and the beauty of the love of God.

North Korea is on the edge of change, as we told you it might be. What did this require? The death of the old energy, and I want you to watch this take place. The advisors of the young leader are going to do their best to pull him back into an old energy. This free choice of his will be far different than his father, for he sees some color. Watch for these things. They'll take longer than you want, but it is the beginning of the beginning.

You'll see a fresh unification of South America sooner than not, for what is going to take place potentially this year in Venezuela. You'll see Iran changing. We have no clock. These are the potentials. These can change with free choice. These are not prophecies. This is a reality shift, dear ones, so number eight becomes the propensity not to war again. This is what Humans are going to want. This is what governments are going to want. There is a wisdom factor that will begin to happen on the planet that is grander than what you think is possible. For when you look at government, what do you think about? You see dysfunction, and there is an axiom that says the more people that try to do something together, the worse it gets. It all settles to the lowest common denominator. I'm telling you even those things are going to become old energy concepts. Instead, you're going to watch wisdom become the top potential.

I have no clock. I cannot tell you when. I can just tell you it is in the works, and there will be the seeds of it for you to observe soon - right now, in every single of the eight categories I showed you.

There are those who will say, "Well, Kryon, you're doing a lot more predictions than you used to." I want to tell you what's going on, dear one. I am not predicting anything. I am just telling you what's already there in the potential soup of your reality. That's what Humans are doing on this planet, and for those who believe this communication, you should breathe a sigh of relief and say, "It's about time." ….”

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems  (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it),  Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse),  Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

“… "Wow, Kryon, how long is that going to take?"

The Humans in the room control that and those listening later and reading. When you leave this room, what are you going to do? Go home, report this, rub your hands together, and wait for it to happen? It won't. For the Humans in the room and the old souls hearing and reading have got work to do, and I've told you this before. You've got work to do.

There's an alliance that you're going to have to create with one another and with another group - the young people of Earth. The youth of this earth are changing the way things work. Can you see it? You're not supposed to sit around and watch them either, because they need you, old soul.

It's time for you to align with the indigos and the concepts of the youth of the planet. Do not think for a moment that their age shows their wisdom. These two attributes are not commensurate with one another; they're not linear. These young people may be older souls than you are! Don't think that because they've got technology that you don't understand that you can't be one with them. Their technology is social networking, the very thing we are talking about, where everyone can talk to everyone. The new consciousness on the planet starts in two areas - the children and the old souls.

Conclusion

This is the message of the day. The recalibration of awareness is going to change systems, education, government and finance. Those who don't choose to be spiritual at all will still move with a new awareness, for they will be aware of something that they are not aware of now - a softer way of living.

We close with a trite statement that we've given before, but that many have stated in jest: "If women ran the world, they would never send their sons to be killed on a battlefield."

Many laugh. How trite, how simple minded. Indeed, there have been women leaders who have put wars together; they had to. They sent their sons, so that's not really a correct statement. However, it's more right than you may think, dear ones.

So now I will make the statement I have made over and over in these recalibrated channellings: "When recalibrated Humans run the world, there will come a day when they will never send their sons into the battlefield." You see, awareness will change all of that. They will eventually see the wisdom of unification, new ways to settle issues, and the intuitive attribute of putting things together instead of tearing them apart.

There will be a time when government armies will not need to be large, and weapons will not be as powerful. Slowly, government won't need them. Slowly, slower than you want, these things will happen as the old soul carries his light and looks at the masters of the planet and emulates them.

You've all heard it: There will come a time when the masters will come back to Earth, and there are many who are waiting for this. However, it has already happened! They couldn't come back until the alignment was right and now it is right. This is what you are feeling in 2012 and beyond. It's starting to happen, and they're back. But they're not back as corporeal Human Beings. They're back as the energy of recalibrating of the awareness of God.

I wouldn't say these things unless they were true. Watch for these things, dear ones. Remember where you heard them first and when some of them start to occur in your news. And when you see the earth working in this fashion, dear one, maybe you'll realize that what I have given today is real.

Be circumspect. There is no perfect timing. Humans will create all this at their own pace. Do not be in fear of the things that might follow, for I say it yet again that the old energy will show itself soon in survival mode and it won't be pretty.

In this beginning of new energy, stand tall and turn on your light. Darkness will shirk before you. That is the truth of the day.

I am Kryon, in love with humanity.

And so it is.

KRYON

Dutch army brings in yoga teacher to help soldiers de-stress

DutchNews, October 19, 2016

Photo: American Forces Press Service 

The Dutch armed forces have brought in a yoga teacher to see if yoga exercises can help soldiers process stress and traumatic experiences, according to the AD. 

Johan Noordloos will focus primarily on teaching army sports instructors to incorporate yoga into their programmes, the paper said. 

Noordloos told the AD that yoga and being trained to kill are not incompatible. 

Dutch soldiers do kill, but they do that to protect others, he said. ‘This is the world we live in,’ he said. ‘But I can help people who have been trained to deal with war to experience peace.’ 

The lessons will be voluntary and no soldier will be forced to take up yoga, although officials say they do believe the practice will be useful. 

‘Being in the army puts soldiers in stressful situations,’ spokesman Jeroen de Vries told the paper. ‘Yoga can help restore the balance in their lives. We want to find out if it helps them deal with difficult situations more easily.’ 

Jean Debie, head of the VBM military union, has welcomed the move. ‘Why not learn the technique if it helps your relax and beat stress,’ Debie said. 

According to the AD, yoga is already used in by the British and US armed forces.

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"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems  (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it),  Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse),  Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

“… "Wow, Kryon, how long is that going to take?"

The Humans in the room control that and those listening later and reading. When you leave this room, what are you going to do? Go home, report this, rub your hands together, and wait for it to happen? It won't. For the Humans in the room and the old souls hearing and reading have got work to do, and I've told you this before. You've got work to do.

There's an alliance that you're going to have to create with one another and with another group - the young people of Earth. The youth of this earth are changing the way things work. Can you see it? You're not supposed to sit around and watch them either, because they need you, old soul.

It's time for you to align with the indigos and the concepts of the youth of the planet. Do not think for a moment that their age shows their wisdom. These two attributes are not commensurate with one another; they're not linear. These young people may be older souls than you are! Don't think that because they've got technology that you don't understand that you can't be one with them. Their technology is social networking, the very thing we are talking about, where everyone can talk to everyone. The new consciousness on the planet starts in two areas - the children and the old souls.

Conclusion

This is the message of the day. The recalibration of awareness is going to change systems, education, government and finance. Those who don't choose to be spiritual at all will still move with a new awareness, for they will be aware of something that they are not aware of now - a softer way of living.

We close with a trite statement that we've given before, but that many have stated in jest: "If women ran the world, they would never send their sons to be killed on a battlefield."

Many laugh. How trite, how simple minded. Indeed, there have been women leaders who have put wars together; they had to. They sent their sons, so that's not really a correct statement. However, it's more right than you may think, dear ones.

So now I will make the statement I have made over and over in these recalibrated channellings: "When recalibrated Humans run the world, there will come a day when they will never send their sons into the battlefield." You see, awareness will change all of that. They will eventually see the wisdom of unification, new ways to settle issues, and the intuitive attribute of putting things together instead of tearing them apart.

There will be a time when government armies will not need to be large, and weapons will not be as powerful. Slowly, government won't need them. Slowly, slower than you want, these things will happen as the old soul carries his light and looks at the masters of the planet and emulates them.

You've all heard it: There will come a time when the masters will come back to Earth, and there are many who are waiting for this. However, it has already happened! They couldn't come back until the alignment was right and now it is right. This is what you are feeling in 2012 and beyond. It's starting to happen, and they're back. But they're not back as corporeal Human Beings. They're back as the energy of recalibrating of the awareness of God.

I wouldn't say these things unless they were true. Watch for these things, dear ones. Remember where you heard them first and when some of them start to occur in your news. And when you see the earth working in this fashion, dear one, maybe you'll realize that what I have given today is real.

Be circumspect. There is no perfect timing. Humans will create all this at their own pace. Do not be in fear of the things that might follow, for I say it yet again that the old energy will show itself soon in survival mode and it won't be pretty.

In this beginning of new energy, stand tall and turn on your light. Darkness will shirk before you. That is the truth of the day.

I am Kryon, in love with humanity.

And so it is.

KRYON

UN summer camps give respite to traumatised young Gazans

Yahoo – AFP, July 23, 2016

Palestinian youth draw during a summer camp at a United Nations Relief and
Works Agency (UNRWA) school on July 23, 2016 in Gaza City (AFP Photo/
Mahmud Hams)

Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - The UN is offering tens of thousands of children in the Gaza strip, traumatised by three wars with Israel since 2008, a summer break at play camps throughout the territory.

Over three weeks, 165,000 children will attend camps offering play activities and access to psychologists, said Bo Schack of UNRWA, the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees.

Some 2,000 young Palestinian refugees will run the activities at 120 sites, he said.

The latest round of fighting in Gaza, in 2014, took the lives of 2,251 Palestinians, including more than 500 children. Seventy-three people were killed on the Israeli side, including 67 soldiers.

The violence, which included widespread Israeli air strikes and shelling, "still affects many children in Gaza", Schack said at a ceremony launching the camps.

"We must work harder still to change the lives of these children for the better, to turn their nightmares into hopes and dreams of a better future," he said.

In 2014, Sara, now 14, took shelter with her mother and brothers in a UN school while fighting raged around and above them.

"I don't like to think about that time, I'd rather go and have fun," she said.

Palestinian girls at a summer camp organised at a UNRWA school on July 23, 

2016 in Gaza City (AFP Photo/Mahmud Hams)

Dressed in a traditional embroidered black dress, she was enthusiastic about the camp.

"We really need to play, to have fun, and summer camps provide us with a good atmosphere," she told AFP before slipping away to join her friends.

About 75 percent of the coastal strip's residents are refugees.

For the past three years, cash-strapped UNRWA has cancelled its previously annual seaside summer camps for lack of funding.

It now holds activities in its own schools.

It says the total cost of this year's three-week programme is $2.3 million (2.1 million euros).

For Hossam, 12, the camps are worth it.

"I'm happy to be here with my friends, he said. "We're going to play football."

Japanese war orphans visit Chinese adoptive parents

Want China Times, Xinhua 2015-07-14

A representative from the delegation bows to Chinese adoptive parents at
an event in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, July 21. (Photo/Xinhua)

A delegation of 54 Japanese war orphans visited Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang province, on Sunday on a tour to pay tribute to their Chinese adoptive parents who took them in at the end of the Second World War in 1945.

The delegation arrived in China about one month before the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

Thousands of Japanese children were left behind in China around 1945 when the Second World War was about to end. The children were then taken in and brought up by Chinese families. Most of them returned to Japan after China and Japan normalized their relations in 1972.

For the war orphans, Japan is the motherland, and China is the hometown, said Ikeda Sumie, director general of a Tokyo-based support group for Japanese returning from China.

"As witnesses and survivors of the war, we have the obligation to tell the younger generations about that period of history," Ikeda said.

Cui Zhirong, who adopted a 3-year-old Japanese girl 70 years ago, said she hoped there would be no more war, as it brought pain to people.

Tano Keiko, a war orphan from Japan's Saitama Prefecture, said as a victim of the war herself, she hoped for a lasting peace between China and Japan.

Gaza plastic surgeons overwhelmed by war injuries

Yahoo – AFP, Guillaume Lavallee, 4 Aug 2014

Doctors treat three-year-old Yamin, suffering from severe burns and

multiple fractures, at the Shifa hospital in Gaza City, on August 3, 2014

Lying on his bed in a Gaza hospital, three-year-old Yamin now sees the world from behind burns which have disfigured him for life.

The tiny boy is just one of hundreds of burn victims and those wounded by Israeli shell fire overwhelming Gaza's sole working operating theatre for plastic surgeons.

He also has burns on his back and multiple fractures suffered when an Israeli strike decimated his family and destroyed their home in Al-Buraj, central Gaza, last week.

It was the evening. The start of Eid al-Fitr, the festival marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

In a single strike, the house was turned to rubble and 19 people lay dead. Yamin, miraculously, was the sole survivor but he was left an orphan and badly burnt.

He was taken to a clinic then rapidly transferred to the burns department at the Shifa hospital in Gaza, where he cries, lying naked, and where a handful of surgeons are now confronted with the endless horrors of the war.

Every day ambulances rush in with shattered lives: charred or bloodied humans who will die a few hours later on their stretchers.

The survivors transfer to an operating table, sometimes the modest one in the burns unit, the only one in the whole of Gaza that plastic surgeons can use.

Local medics say 1,829 Palestinians, mostly civilians according to the UN, have died since the latest confrontation between Israel and Hamas began on July 8.

At least another 9,000 have been hurt, many seriously.

"There are very few light injuries in this war," says Ghassan Abu Sitta, a plastic surgeon from the American University of Beirut, sent a week ago by the Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) organisation to help out in Gaza.

"My feeling is around 70 percent would have some kind of permanent deformity, either in terms of scarring or in terms of functional deformity... They will never be the same again."

His worst case? "An 8 year-old boy who basically lost half of his face including one eye and lost the other eye with shrapnel in. What I needed to do is reconstruct the face just to cover the wounds.

Doctors treat three-year-old Yamin, suffering from severe burns and

multiple fractures, at the Shifa hospital in Gaza City, on August 3, 2014

"The eyes are lost. He lost all his family, his ability to care for himself has been completely destroyed. There is no future for him, he keeps asking why they have turned the lights off," Dr Abu Sitta says.

"The size and the magnitude of the carnage that has affected Gaza is beyond the capacity of any health system, let alone a health system that has struggled with eight years of siege," says the surgeon, who was also in Gaza during Israel's 'Cast Lead' operation at the end of 2008 and start of 2009.

This time the fighting has caused more deaths and more wounded. And worse injuries.

"The fact that we are unable to evacuate patients outside Gaza means that all of these patients are inside the system," the surgeon says.

Then he turns away to perform a skin graft on a young man with a pierced foot and 10 centimetre (four inch) crater on his calf, through which his tibia is visible.

Hospitals struck

For the past month, every day brings deliveries of bodies, wounded people and trauma to Gaza's hospitals.

"We are now looking at a health and humanitarian disaster," James Rawley, UN humanitarian co-ordinator for the Palestinian territories, said at the weekend.

A third of hospitals have been hit during the fighting and the violence has prevented nearly half of medical staff from reaching the clinics and health centres that are still standing.

"The current state of the health system is disastrous because the people are exhausted, many hospitals have been affected by the bombardments, and people are afraid to go to hospital," as sometimes shooting is taking place along their route, says Nicolas Palarus, head of operations in Gaza for Doctors Without Borders.

Palestinian medical staff, the backbone of the local health system, face "stress from the fighting, being far from the family, separated, widespread fatigue, lack of some medicines," he says.

"From primary healthcare to the big hospitals, the whole chain is disrupted. The system is in a catastrophic state," Palarus says.

On this day in the burns unit, medical workers paint an antibacterial ointment onto little Yamin, naked, frail and frightened. It will help his skin scar over.

But his cousin and her husband, now his guardians, interrupt. Maybe the best thing for the tiny tot, they say, would be to evacuate him from Gaza. To get him far away from the horrors of the war.

Related Article:

Children of Gaza face struggle to conquer war trauma

Children of Gaza face struggle to conquer war trauma

News.Net – AFP, Guillaume Lavallee, 3 August 2014

Palestinian children affected by the war gather around a UN volunteer at a
 school in Jabalia as part of a United Nations community mental health
programmes in the Gaza Strip, on August 2, 2014

Ask any child in Gaza to do a drawing and the resulting picture is likely to be a house being bombed by a fighter plane.

In the strife-torn Palestinian enclave, thousands of children are suffering from the trauma of war but resources to help them are scarce.

At a school in the northern town of Jabalia which has been converted into a refuge, specialist teachers hand out paper and coloured crayons to a motley band of shaken up children, asking them to draw whatever is in their head.

Jamal Diab, a nine-year old with red flecks in his brown hair, draws his dead grandfather. Under the drawing, he writes in Arabic: "I am sad because of the martyrs."

"A few days ago, aircraft bombarded our house. We had to leave quickly and leave everything behind. It was dangerous," the lad breathes timidly as he shows his drawing.

Tiny seven-year old Bara Marouf shows a drawing of his grandfather without any legs. He was seriously wounded in an air strike.

In the classroom, the same sketch comes up repeatedly: an aircraft filling the sky and bombarding a house, subtitled with the caption "I want to go home".

"Who is afraid of aircraft?" the teacher asks the children sitting in a circle on a mat.

Immediately little hands push towards the sky and high-pitched voices clamour: "Me", "me", "me".

"Me, I'm afraid of missiles and planes. Half our house was destroyed. We left it to come here," explains Itimad Subh, an 11-year-old girl with sparkling eyes.

'They blame themselves'

According to the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, about 300 children have been killed since the start on July 8 of Israel's offensive against Hamas militants firing rockets into the Jewish state.

Those who are still alive try not to internalise too much the violence they have experienced, seen and heard.

Inside the school, groups of youths attend half-hour sessions one after the other.

The two teachers, patient and exhausted, their faces enclosed in a tight veil, ask the children to jump on the spot and call out, then to wave their arms like someone disco dancing, to expel accumulated black thoughts, frustration and stress.

"The children have all lived extreme experiences," says Dr. Iyad Zaqut, a psychiatrist who manages the United Nations community mental health programmes in the Gaza Strip.

"It is very difficult for children to grasp what is happening, why their life is at risk, why they have to leave their homes, why they have to resettle, why they witness very traumatising scenes," Zaqut said.

"To prevent children from processing and thinking about all these issues, we try to distract them, to help them live some joy, to have a little fun inside the shelter.

"Generally, when they are exposed to traumatic events, the way they perceive the incident can be very distorted, they might blame themselves, they might blame their neighbours and this blaming is very harmful," the psychiatrist said.

"We try to reprocess these distorted ideas," he explained, noting that he has diagnosed cases of post-traumatic stress and adolescent depression.

No therapy in wartime

But it is hard to make much progress with the therapy.

In the Gaza Strip, 460,000 people -- more than a quarter of the population -- have been displaced by the fighting and have gone to stay with relatives or found refuge at UN shelters.

Fewer than 100 specialist teachers are "treating" more than 100,000 children.

Only in exceptional cases do the children have access to one-on-one meetings with psychologists and psychiatrists. And even fewer get a follow up.

Gaza has been in the firing line of military operations in 2008-2009 and again in 2012 but the consequences have been greater during this current war between Israel and Hamas.

UNICEF estimates that 326,000 minors in Gaza are in need of psychological help.

The children and adolescents sheltering in the UN centres can at least attend the group classes but hundreds of thousands of others affected by the war are left to wander unhelped through devastated neighbourhoods.