United Nations, March 24 : More than 2,100 children have been killed or injured since the military escalation in the Middle East, UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) Deputy Executive Director Ted Chaiban said.

"Twenty-three days into the escalating conflict in the Middle East, children across the region are paying a devastating price. A further descent into a wider or protracted conflict would be catastrophic for millions more," Chaiban told reporters on Monday at the UN headquarters in New York.

The casualties included 206 children killed in Iran, 118 in Lebanon, four in Israel and one in Kuwait, he said, Xinhua news agency reported.

"That is an average of approximately 87 children either killed or injured every day since the beginning of the war," Chaiban said.

Alongside the dead and wounded, there has been rapid displacement across several countries, driven by relentless bombardment and evacuation orders that have emptied communities, he said.

In Iran, the UN Refugee Agency estimated that up to 3.2 million people have been displaced, including up to 864,000 children, while in Lebanon, more than 1 million people are displaced, including an estimated 370,000 children, he said.

According to Chaiban, across the Middle East, around 44.8 million children were already living in conflict-affected settings before the escalation.

Talking about his recent visit to Lebanon, Chaiban said what he witnessed there and what is unfolding across the region "requires the full attention and a clear, collective response."

In Lebanon, more than 350 public schools were used as shelters, disrupting the education of around 100,000 students, and public services were under severe pressure, with water systems damaged and health workers killed as they tried to rescue populations, he said.

While UNICEF has reached 151,000 internally-displaced persons in more than 250 shelters and in hard-to-reach areas with essential non-food items, and was providing water and sanitation support in 188 shelters, serving around 46,000 people, the scale of needs "is increasing faster than available resources," he warned.

"We remind all parties of their obligations under international humanitarian law," adding that, as the secretary-general has indicated, "we need a de-escalation and a political way forward to this war," he said.

/IANS