In summer 2025, as I began work on Save the Children’s new Children and Blast Injuries report, I worked with colleagues to contact and gather accounts of children in conflict zones who had recently survived blast incidents. We hoped to speak with their families, understand what happened, and include their stories so the world could understand what explosive weapons do to children. One of those children lived in Yemen.
Before we could schedule the interview, the update arrived - brief and devastating: the child had died from their injuries.
There was nothing dramatic about how the news arrived - just a quiet update in a long list of emails. But it stayed with me. Not because this one story was unique, but because it wasn’t. Many children whose experiences should be shaping this report will never have their voices heard. Others survived, and their memories, pain, and hopes for recovery help speak for thousands more across the globe.
These stories show how ordinary moments become deadly for children growing up amidst conflict.
“My leg was amputated immediately.”
Thirteen-year-old Ali in Sudan, whose life changed while playing football with his brother
Save the Children’s new report Children and Blast Injuries: The devastating impact of explosive weapons on children, 2020–2025 - launched on 20 November, World Children’s Day - offers one of the most detailed examinations to date of how explosive weapons are reshaping childhood in modern conflict. Produced in partnership with Imperial College London and the Paediatric Blast Injury Partnership, the report draws on findings from 11 contemporary conflicts, reviews international frameworks for protecting children from explosive weapons, assesses the cost of inaction for affected communities, and highlights key research on the medical, psychosocial, and developmental impacts of blast injuries on children.
At first, we thought she was dead.”
Mousa, father of eighteen-month-old Manal in Yemen, injured when she picked up what she thought was a toy.
Explosive weapons are now the leading cause of child casualties in conflict.
Between 2020 and 2024, nearly 50,000 children were killed or injured in conflict, and explosive weapons accounted for more than 60% of all verified child casualties.
In 2024 alone, almost 12,000 children were killed or injured - the highest number ever recorded. These numbers represent only a fraction of the true scale. Many casualties are never officially recorded.
The occupied Palestinian territory, Sudan, Ukraine and Syria were among the deadliest conflicts for children in 2024.
Government forces - not armed groups - have been responsible for most child casualties for three consecutive years.
Military doctrines are stretching the idea of “military necessity” to justify strikes on homes, schools, and hospitals - eroding the very principle that civilians must be protected. New and emerging weapons technologies – First Person View (FPV) drones, loitering munitions, glide bombs, and cluster munitions - are increasingly deployed in densely populated areas. Reports indicate widespread civilian targeting: people walking, cycling, riding buses, or sitting in ambulances, often far from military objectives.
“I was looking for my child. I screamed: ‘Where are you?’ Then I saw him. Blood was pouring from my son.”
Olha, mother of seven-year-old Heorhii from Ukraine, who still carries shrapnel in his chest after a missile strike outside a social services building.
Children are uniquely vulnerable to the impact of conflict, including from explosive weapons. Children have a lower threshold of harm and sustain more severe injuries than adults. Many children arrive at hospitals with shrapnel wounds, traumatic amputations, severe burns, fractures, and complex injuries. Their smaller bodies and developing organs mean the same blast that an adult might survive is far more likely to kill a child or cause catastrophic trauma. The report finds that 65–70% of injured children sustain wounds to multiple parts of their bodies and that children under seven are almost twice as likely to suffer life-threatening head injuries. Burns are more severe in children because their skin is thinner. And because children’s bones and growth plates are still developing, early limb loss means repeated surgeries, unequal limb length, deformities and decades of rehabilitation.
“Gaza is redefining war injuries. I saw many babies who suffered amputations before learning to walk.”
Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a surgeon with expertise in treating blast injuries in children who spent 45 days in Gaza between October and November 2023 operating at Al Ahli hospital.
Blast injuries reshape the entire trajectory of a child’s life. They interrupt education, isolate children from their communities, and place enormous strain on families navigating life-altering injuries in settings where services are limited or non-existent. The psychological toll is equally profound: children experience nightmares, regression, anxiety, and lasting fear.
Yet funding for victim assistance, research and rehabilitation remains critically low, even though children make up a nearly half (43%) of all casualties from unexploded ordnance. Explosive ordnance contamination remains one of the biggest obstacles to recovery in countries emerging from conflict.
Save the Children is calling on governments to stop the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, enforce stronger political and military policies to protect children in conflict, and invest in victim assistance, research, and rehabilitation for children affected by blast injuries.
Learn more about our Paediatric Blast Injury Partnership
Read the report
