Relief items are distributed to families staying at a mosque in the Suleiman Al-Halabi neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria, on 8 February 2023.
A UN official estimates that more than five million Syrians may be displaced as a result of Monday’s deadly earthquakes that hit both Syria and its neighbor Turkey.
As many as 5.3 million Syrians may have lost their homes as a result of the earthquake, according to Sivanka Dhanapala, the UNHCR’s representative for Syria. “That is a significant amount and affects a population that is already experiencing widespread eviction,”
In addition, he said, “We’ve got economic shocks, COVID, and we’re now in the depths of winter, with blizzards raging in the afflicted areas. For Syria, this is a crisis within a crisis.”
Victims of the magnitude 7.8 and 7.6 earthquakes have flocked to camps established for refugees driven from other parts of Syria by nearly 12 years of conflict. Many people have lost their houses or are too afraid to enter damaged structures.
Over 3,300 of the 24,000 deaths caused by the earthquake are in Syria, with the remainder being in Turkey.
According to Dhanapala, the UNHCR has “rushed aid” to the areas of Syria that are most in need, but “it’s been very, very difficult.”
“The country currently has 6.8 million internally displaced persons. This occurred before to the earthquake.
A second UN relief convoy of 14 trucks has entered Syria’s rebel-held territory, following the Thursday entry of six vehicles.
In coordination with the UN and humanitarian organizations, the Syrian government has declared that it will let assistance supplies to rebel-held areas outside of its jurisdiction.
The extent of the destruction in Syria is only now starting to become clear, according to Kristen Saloomey of Al Jazeera, who was reporting from the UN in New York.
Critics claim that even if more assistance convoys are passing through the one authorized border point into the most severely affected communities, it is still too little, too late.
She claimed that the bulk of those displaced by the earthquake live in areas that the Syrian government doesn’t control and where people have already been uprooted by years of fighting.
A $50 million emergency fund for Syria was also given by the UN on Friday, bringing the total to date, according to Saloomey, “but an assessment team is presently on the ground and the needs are projected to considerably exceed that.”
Beginning in 2011 with the ruthless suppression of peaceful protesters, the conflict in Syria grew to include armed organizations from other countries.
About half of the country’s pre-war population has been driven from their homes as a result of the conflict, and many have fled to Turkey, where there have been close to 500,000 fatalities.
