June 4, 2026
Hafiz ullah Storai Sherani
ISLAMABAD
A narrow X ray bed, yellowing clothes stained with blood, and a little eight-year-old girl, Hajra, lying on a stretcher – this is the harrowing scene of the hospital roon. A small key hangs around her neck with a thread – its crushing weight heavier than even the mortar shell fragments embedded in her body.
Hajra was brought to the hospital after an incident of severe firing in the Jani Khel (Norang Khel) area of Bannu district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. But when doctors began examining the deep gashes and wounds on the child’s head and chest, they also tried to take off the key. Almost instantly the girl, writhing in pain, stopped them.
“Don’t give this key to anyone else! You must give it back to me.”
Irshad Qarar, who narrated the incident, reveals that the key was to a box where Hajra had collected some money (a total of 100) every penny earned by selling glass bottles. “She wanted to use those 100 rupees to pay off the debt her mother had taken to get her Eid clothes,” he says.
A local police source tells Voicepk, that on June 3, Hajra’s family was returning home from the hospital after a general check-up, when two mortar shells fell near their vehicle.
When the first shell hit, Hajra, her five-year-old brother Abdullah, their uncle Safeer, and his newlywed bride Naila, were all injured inside the vehicle. After the the second shell exploded right next to them, the couple, who had married just five months ago, breathed their last right in front of Hajra’s eyes. Hajra, her younger brother, and another woman named Yasmeen reached the hospital in critical condition.
Fayaz Wazir, a resident of Jani Khel and a political activist, expressed deep grief over the situation.
“Wars are fought all over the world, and fights between different groups and people keep happening, which is a separate topic,” he said. “But even in wars, women, the elderly, and children are exempt and free under all religions and international laws. But unfortunately, in our region, these very segments are targeted the most, especially our children. Yesterday’s incident is right in front of everyone, where a family returning home from the hospital was hit by mortar shells; people were killed and children were injured. Most of the children in our area are passing through this horrible state today.”
The physical wounds of Jani Khel’s Hajra and Abdullah might heal with time, but the trauma inflicted on their minds carries numbers and ground realities that are even more terrifying.
Dr. Ghulam Rasool, a renowned psychiatrist in Pakistan, Dean of the Faculty of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Bolan University of Medical and Health Sciences, and Executive Director of the Balochistan Institute of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, spoke to Voicepk.
“Everyone knows that a person gets affected by experiencing conditions involving war, unrest, blood, and killing. However, according to medical research, it has a greater impact on younger children. It increases anger, grief, pain, and suffering in children. The child – whether a boy or a girl – begins to feel that their world has been devastated, their loved one has been snatched from them, so they understand that everything belonging to them is finished. This has a greater negative impact on their mental health before puberty.”
Dr Ghulam Rasool says that Pakistan is approximately 10 to 15 percent higher than other countries in this regard.
“If care or treatment is not provided within three to seven days, the child becomes a victim of stress. Furthermore, if it remains untreated, it transforms into trauma,” he says. “During this, the thought of death and war constantly occupies their mind and heart. And if treatment is not administered within seven to eight months, they slide into complete depression—meaning hopelessness—due to which their mental, physical, and social life becomes severely paralyzed.”
Dr Ghulam Rasool says that the child’s belief system may be at risk if not treated properly.
“If children are not treated, their behavior, education, and economic prospects may all deteriorate. It also leads to a state where they do not trust anyone; everyone appears as an enemy to them, even if they are their loved ones. The tragedy is that no special attention is given to this. The situation for children from Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is worse. Many young patients are also brought to us from Afghanistan. The sad part is that there is no data collected either.”
Non-governmental observations and national data
Social and political activist Advocate Haroon pointed toward the other side of this tragedy.
“The tragedy is that in these war-torn areas, such as Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, neither the government is active, nor any NGOs,” he said. “For this reason, children who get physically injured, or those children who are severely affected mentally by this wartime environment—there is neither any arrangement for their treatment and training, nor is any data available regarding them. In my view, this is a very big oppression against children, and its impact on the coming time will be extremely bad.”
Advocate Haroon’s concern is confirmed by the latest documentary report of the National Commission on the Rights of Child (NCRC), according to which a very large number of children in Pakistan’s conflict-affected areas suffer from severe psychological distress.
According to MICS data cited in the National Commission on the Rights of Child (NCRC) report, anxiety and depression among children aged 5 to 17 years vary significantly across Pakistan’s provinces.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa records the highest rates, with 7.0% of children affected by anxiety and 5.3% by depression, making it the most burdened province in terms of child mental health. Balochistan follows, where 5.2% of children experience anxiety and 4.4% suffer from depression. In Sindh, the figures stand at 4.0% for anxiety and 3.2% for depression, while Punjab reports the lowest prevalence among the four provinces, with 3.7% of children affected by anxiety and 2.7% by depression. Notably, across all provinces, anxiety rates consistently exceed depression rates, and a clear geographic pattern emerges — mental health challenges among children are more pronounced in the conflict-affected and underdeveloped northwestern and southwestern regions of the country than in the more urbanized south and east.
These official statistics provide clear evidence that the highest rates of anxiety and depression among children across Pakistan are in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan—the very regions undergoing security operations, border tensions, and what Fayaz Wazir describes as ‘wars devoid of laws.’
As the world observes the International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression under the United Nations, a UNICEF report shows that approximately one in seven adolescents worldwide lives with a mental disorder. Globally, grave violations against children in conflict zones have experienced a staggering 25 percent increase, but in Pakistan, due to low awareness, social stigma, and underreporting, the mental agony of millions of children like Hajra remains completely unaddressed.