Eleven-year-old Hajer Sami says she remembers her father . It 's flashes of memory , really -- a smile , a laugh . She was only 4 when he was killed , but she ca n't recall vivid memories of him and their family when it was whole . Her family was torn apart when her father , a policeman , was gunned down seven years ago on the streets of Baghdad . She struggles to comprehend why anyone would have wanted to kill her father or why some people detonate explosives in the middle of a crowd . `` Why do these people kill other people ? Do they get paid money to do it ? '' she asks . Why ? It 's a question likely asked by many at the Al Noor Children 's Center in Baghdad 's Sadr City , a Shiite enclave home to more than two million people . Here , inside a rundown , two-story building , Hajer is one of the more than 300 children who have been orphaned -- most in the Islamic sense when a family loses its breadwinner . It 's almost always the father . Most have a place to stay , with a mother or a distant relative . The center serves as day care center with a twist , a place where the children can go for food , clothing and education . In a city known for its violence , the center is full of children with tales of a parent lost to a bomb blast or a gunfight . In some cases , it 's a child whose parent was a suicide bomber . `` We do n't differentiate , '' says Liqaa Al Aboudi , the center 's director . Nobody is sure just how many Iraqi children have lost a parent to the sectarian violence that gripped the country after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion . The Iraqi Orphanage Foundation puts the number in the millions , while the United Nations says it is hundreds of thousands . Now with the death toll rising as Iraq battles extremist fighters who have taken over large swaths of the country and vowed to overthrow the government , more and more children are being brought to Al Noor . Al Aboudi started the children 's center in 2009 on the outskirts of Sadr City . Then there 10 children , she says . `` I feel like I am falling short of what I need to do for the children . I always hope they have more . I try to make them happy with clothes , '' says Al Aboudi . `` I feel bad for their mothers as salaries are really low and not enough to live on here in Iraq . '' Hajer and her best friend , 11-year-old Baneen , sit on a brown couch at the center giggling . They could n't be more different . Hajer wears her hair pulled back in a green band with a pink bow , while Baneen covers her hair with a traditional Muslim headscarf known as a hijab . Theirs is a friendship born from grief . Baneen , too , lost her father . He was killed when a bomb exploded 10 months ago in Sadr City , she says . Baneen and her four siblings now live with her paternal grandparents , who do n't have enough money to take care of all their needs . Her 6-year-old brother , Ali , never strays far from his sister . During a conversation about what happened to their family , he hangs on her every word . Asked want he wants at the children 's center , he says better food . Hamburgers ? Pizza ? `` Shawarma , '' he says . Across the room , a woman bounces baby Zahra on her lap . Zahra , 1 , and her brother , 4-year-old Mustafa , were found playing among the bodies of their parents . It was mid-afternoon on a cold January day when militants burst into the family 's home on the northern outskirts of Baghdad , a neighborhood known as Husseiniya . Was it a revenge killing ? Was it sectarian ? `` We do n't know why it happened , '' says Um Sajjad , the children 's aunt . She does n't like talking about what happened that day as she worries it will remind the children of what they have lost . Women train with AK-47s to defend the streets of Baghdad . Iraq to split in three : So why not ? How ISIS is overshadowing al Qaeda .
Al Noor Children 's Center in Baghdad 's Sadr City helps with food , shelter and education . They come from families where the breadwinner has been exposed to violence . It 's motto : ` ` I feel like I am falling short of what I want to do ''