UN: Over 400,000 children in Lebanon have been displaced in 3 weeks of war

More than 400,000 children in Lebanon have been displaced in the past three weeks, a top official with the UN children's agency said Monday, warning of a "lost generation" in the small country grappling with multiple crises and now in the middle of war.

Israel has escalated its campaign against the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group, including launching a ground invasion, after a year of its war with Hamas in Gaza.

Ted Chaiban, UNICEF's deputy executive director for humanitarian actions, has visited schools that have been turned into shelters to host displaced families.

"What struck me is that this war is three weeks old and so many children have been affected," Chaiban told AP in Beirut. "As we sit here today, 1.2 million children are deprived of education. Their public schools have either been rendered inaccessible, have been damaged by the war or are being used as shelters. The last thing this country needs, in addition to everything else it has gone through, is the risk of a lost generation."

While some Lebanese private schools are still operating, the public school system has been badly affected, along with the country's most vulnerable people such as Palestinian and Syrian refugees. "What I'm worried about is that we have hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian children that are at risk of losing their learning," Chaiban said.

Strikes in Gaza

Israeli military strikes killed at least 50 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces tightened their squeeze around Jabalia in the north of the enclave on Tuesday, amid fierce battles with Hamas-led fighters.

Palestinian health officials said at least 17 people were killed by Israeli fire near Al-Falouja in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza's eight historic refugee camps, while 10 others were killed in Bani Suhaila in eastern Khan Younis in the south when an Israeli missile struck a house.

Earlier on Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike destroyed three houses in the Sabra suburb of Gaza City, and the local civil emergency service said they recovered two bodies from the site, while the search continued for 12 other people who were believed to have been in the houses at the time of the strike. Eight others were killed when a house was struck in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.

Later on Tuesday, the Gaza health ministry said one doctor was killed when he tried to help the people wounded by Israeli strikes in Al-Falouja in Jabalia.

It added that several medics were wounded when their ambulance came under Israeli fire in the northern and southern Gaza Strip.