UN agency says Syrian children have been hardest hit by the civil war

FILE - In this Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013 file photo, veiled Syrian women wait with their children for vaccinations against polio at one of the Syrian refugee camps in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon. An international charity organization Save Children has warned Monday, March 10, 2014 of a health care disaster in Syria with newborns dying in hospital incubators during power cuts and children having their limbs amputated for lack of alternative treatment. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari, File) (The Associated Press)

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FILE - This Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2013 file photo shows a Syrian girl weeping after receiving the measles vaccine from UNICEF nurses Nadine Houjairi, second right, and Genivieve Bashalani, right, at the U.N. refugee agency's registration center in Zahleh, in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. An international charity organization Save Children has warned Monday, March 10, 2014 of a health care disaster in Syria with newborns dying in hospital incubators during power cuts and children having their limbs amputated for lack of alternative treatment. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File) (The Associated Press)

FILE - In this Monday, May 6, 2013, file photo, Syrian refugee Um Raad, 30, from Daraa, holds her 6 day-old son, Abdullah, at the Moroccan field hospital in Zaatari refugee camp near the Syrian border, in Mafraq, Jordan. Pregnant Syrian women say they never imagined giving birth outside their beloved homeland and inside a tough desert refugee camp across the border in Jordan where they battle heat, dust and to get enough drinking water. An international charity organization Save Children has warned Monday, March 10, 2014 of a health care disaster in Syria with newborns dying in hospital incubators during power cuts and children having their limbs amputated for lack of alternative treatment. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon, File) (The Associated Press)

BEIRUT – The United Nations' agency for child protection says 5.5 million Syrian children have been affected by the civil war, losing lives, limbs, parents, teachers, schools, homes and virtually every aspect of their childhood.

UNICEF says Syrian children are paying the highest price in the conflict, which is now entering its fourth year.

It says more than 10,000 children have been killed in the fighting between President Bashar Assad's forces and rebels trying to oust him.

According to a UNICEF report released on Tuesday, more than half of the 2 million Syrian refugees — about 1.2 million — are children. Nearly a half of those are under the age of five.

The report says another 3 million children have been displaced inside Syria because of the fighting.