UN official in Syria says the ‘crisis within a crisis’ is also making the delivery of aid more difficult.
People take shelter inside a mosque, following an earthquake, in Jableh, Syria, on February 9, 2023. [Yamam al Shaar/Reuters]
Published On 11 Feb 2023
More than five million Syrians may be homeless after Monday’s devastating earthquakes that struck the country and its neighbour Turkey, according to a United Nations official.
“As many as 5.3 million people in Syria may have been left homeless by the earthquake,” Sivanka Dhanapala, the Syria representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Friday. “That is a huge number and comes to a population already suffering mass displacement.”
“For Syria, this is a crisis within a crisis,” he added, “We’ve had economic shocks, COVID and are now in the depths of winter, with blizzards raging in the affected areas.”
Survivors of the magnitude 7.8 and 7.6 quakes have flocked to camps set up for people displaced by nearly 12 years of war from other parts of Syria. Many lost their homes or are too scared to return to damaged buildings.
Some 24,000 people have already died across Turkey and Syria because of the quake – more than 3,300 of those in Syria.
Dhanapala said the UNHCR has been “rushing aid” to the badly affected parts of Syria, but “it’s been very, very difficult”.
“There are 6.8 million people already internally displaced in the country. And this was before the earthquake.”
Meanwhile, a second UN aid convoy of 14 trucks has crossed into rebel-held areas of Syria – after an initial six vehicles went in on Thursday.
The Syrian government has said it will allow aid deliveries to rebel-held areas outside of its control, in cooperation with the UN and humanitarian organisations.
“The full scale of the devastation in Syria is only beginning to come to light,” said Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey, reporting from the UN in New York.
Although more aid convoys are getting through the one authorised border point into the hardest-hit areas, our correspondent said critics argue it is too little, too late.
“The majority of [people made homeless from the quake are] in areas the Syrian government doesn’t control, where people had already been uprooted by years of war,” she said.
On Friday the UN also released another $25m in emergency funding for Syria, bringing the total so far to $50m, Saloomey said, “but an assessment team is now on the ground and the needs are expected to well exceed that”.
The conflict in Syria started in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful protests, and escalated to pull in foreign powers and armed groups.
Nearly half a million people have been killed, and the conflict has forced about half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes, with many seeking refuge in Turkey.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
Aid trickles in as death toll from Turkey-Syria quakes surpasses 24,000
Issued on: 11/02/2023 -
International aid was trickling into parts of Turkey and Syria on Saturday where rescuers toiled to pull children from rubble in areas devastated by a massive earthquake that has killed over 24,000 people.
A winter freeze in the affected areas has hurt rescue efforts and compounded the suffering of millions of people, many in desperate need of aid.
At least 870,000 people urgently needed food in the two countries after the quake, which has left up to 5.3 million people homeless in Syria alone, the UN warned.
Aftershocks following Monday's 7.8-magnitude tremor have added to the death toll and further upended the lives of survivors.
The United Nations World Food Programme appealed for $77 million to provide food rations to at least 590,000 newly displaced people in Turkey and 284,000 in Syria.
Of those, 545,000 were internally displaced people and 45,000 were refugees, it said.
Humanitarian access
The UN rights office on Friday urged all actors in the affected area — where Kurdish militants and Syrian rebels operate — to allow humanitarian access.
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is considered a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies, announced a temporary halt in fighting to ease recovery work.
In rebel-held northwestern Syria, about four million people rely on humanitarian relief but there have been no aid deliveries from government-controlled areas in three weeks.
(with AFP)
Issued on: 11/02/2023 -
International aid was trickling into parts of Turkey and Syria on Saturday where rescuers toiled to pull children from rubble in areas devastated by a massive earthquake that has killed over 24,000 people.
A winter freeze in the affected areas has hurt rescue efforts and compounded the suffering of millions of people, many in desperate need of aid.
At least 870,000 people urgently needed food in the two countries after the quake, which has left up to 5.3 million people homeless in Syria alone, the UN warned.
Aftershocks following Monday's 7.8-magnitude tremor have added to the death toll and further upended the lives of survivors.
The United Nations World Food Programme appealed for $77 million to provide food rations to at least 590,000 newly displaced people in Turkey and 284,000 in Syria.
Of those, 545,000 were internally displaced people and 45,000 were refugees, it said.
Humanitarian access
The UN rights office on Friday urged all actors in the affected area — where Kurdish militants and Syrian rebels operate — to allow humanitarian access.
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is considered a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies, announced a temporary halt in fighting to ease recovery work.
In rebel-held northwestern Syria, about four million people rely on humanitarian relief but there have been no aid deliveries from government-controlled areas in three weeks.
(with AFP)
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