More than 4 million Syrians have fled the civil war ravaging their country to become refugees in the surrounding region — a million of them in the past 10 months alone, the UN said yesterday.
“This is the biggest refugee population from a single conflict in a generation,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Antonio Guterres said in a statement.
“It is a population that needs the support of the world, but is instead living in dire conditions and sinking deeper into poverty,” he said.
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UNHCR said a surge in new refugee arrivals in Turkey had pushed the total number of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries to 4,013,000 people.
Just more than 10 months ago, at the end of August 2013, the number of registered Syrian refugees stood at 3 million, UNHCR said, adding that if Syrians continue fleeing their country at the same pace it expects the number to reach 4.27 million by the end of the year.
The current number of refugees is already by far the highest handled by UNHCR for a single conflict in nearly a quarter century, since the agency was assisting about 4.6 million Afghan refugees in 1992, a spokeswoman said.
More than 230,000 people have been killed in Syria since anti-government protests erupted in March 2011, precipitating a civil war pitting pro-regime forces, rebels and jihadist groups against each other.
In addition to the millions who have fled Syria, 7.6 million have been displaced inside the war-torn country, “many of them in difficult circumstances and in locations that are difficult to reach,” UNHCR said.
Syrians are so desperate to escape the nightmare conditions in their country that they made up a third of the 137,000 people who flooded across the Mediterranean to Europe during the first half of the year — many in rickety boats and at the mercy of human traffickers, UNHCR figures showed.
The announcement came amid reports that Turkey, already hosting about 1.8 million Syrian refugees, is preparing a giant new refugee camp to house 55,000 people amid concerns that an anticipated major escalation of the conflict in Aleppo could spark a growing exodus.
Another 1.17 million Syrian refugees have sought safety in Lebanon and now account for a quarter of inhabitants in that country.
Jordan is hosting more than 629,000 Syrian refugees, Iraq counts nearly 250,000, Egypt has taken in nearly 132,500, and more than 24,000 others have sought refuge elsewhere in North Africa, UNHCR figures showed.
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