EU staffer killed in Damascus

Ahmad Shihadeh was killed while delivering humanitarian aid in Damascus' suburb of Deraya, the European Union's police chief Katherine Ashton said in Brussels on Wednesday.

"Ahmad," who was killed on Tuesday, "was known for his courage and selflessness," Ashton added, while offering condolences to his family and friends.

"As we approach the second anniversary of the uprising in Syria, I call again on all sides to take urgent steps to end the violence," Ashton told reporters.

Children used a 'human shields'

Meanwhile, British charity Save the Children, in a report published Wednesday, said both sides in Syria's nearly two-year conflict were using boys as soldiers and human shields.

"There is a growing pattern of armed groups on both sides of the conflict recruiting children under 18 as porters, guards, informers or fighters," said Save the Children.

"In some children as young as eight have been used as human shields," the charity added.

One in three children interviewed, the organization said, told researchers of moments when they had been hit, kicked or shot at.

Carolyn Miles, head of Save the Children said the world could not allow Syria's societal breakdown to continue unchecked. "The lives of too many children are at stake," she said.

Entire generation at risk

Her remarks echo a report issued Tuesday by the UN children's agency UNICEF which said an entire young generation of Syrians was threatened.

Many Syrian children were traumatized, UNICEF and Save the Children said, by seeing family members and friends killed and terrified by the sounds and scenes of conflict.

"You never want to hear a child talk about watching their friend killed or their father tortured in front of them or their brother shot through the leg," said Justin Forsyth, Save the Children's chief executive while on a visit to Lebanon.

About 800,000 under 14-year-olds are internally displaced within Syria, UNICEF said. More than half-a-million children had also fled Syria as war refugees.

5,500 children killed

A key activist group that keeps tracks of Syria's casualties, the Violations Documentation Center (VDC) in Syria said some 5,500 children under the age of 15, including 3,800 boys and 1,700 girls, have been killed over the past two years.

The VDC also said 901 boys and 28 girls are in detention, while about 100 children have been reported missing.

Meanwhile, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said intense clashes were concentrated in the Damascus neighborhoods of Jobar and Barzeh on Wednesday. Fighting also raged in other Syrian cities, including Homs, the group reported.

ipj/jlw (AFP, dpa, Reuters, AP)