BEIRUT – Hollywood star and UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) envoy Angelina Jolie met orphaned Syrian refugee children in Lebanon and called for an end to the war across the border, on Monday, Feb. 24.

Syria’s nearly three-year war has forced millions to flee the country, most of them to neighboring countries like Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

Jolie said meeting with orphaned Syrian children in the eastern Bekaa Valley was a “heart-rending experience” and thanked Lebanon for assisting Syrian refugees, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said in statement.

“They have lost their families and their childhood has been hijacked by war. They are so young, yet they are bearing the burdens of their reality as if they are adults,” it quoted Jolie as saying.

Lebanon hosts nearly one million Syrians, most of them women and children.

Jolie also welcomed a UN Security Council aid resolution adopted on Saturday as “a long overdue step in the right direction for the hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrian men, women and children trapped in hard to reach areas across Syria.”

She voiced hope that the resolution would be “the start of a new phase in ending the conflict.”

The UNHCR goodwill ambassador also urged the international community to provide funds to help Lebanon cope with the refugee crisis which has exacerbated its own limited resources.