5.3 million may be homeless in Syria after devastating earthquake

Beirut:

A UN official said on Friday that 5.3 million people in Syria may have been left homeless by a devastating earthquake in the region this week.
“More than 5.3 million people in Syria may have been rendered homeless by the earthquake,” the Syrian representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Shivanka Dhanapala, said at a press conference.

He said the United Nations estimated that 5.37 million people affected by the earthquake would need shelter assistance across the country.

“This is a huge number and comes from a population already suffering from massive displacement,” he said.

“For Syria, it is a crisis within a crisis. We have had economic shocks, Covid and now we are in the cold winter.”

Earthquake survivors flock to camps set up for people displaced by nearly 12 years of war from other parts of Syria.

Many people lost their homes or are afraid to return to damaged buildings.

The earthquake killed nearly 23,000 people across Turkey and Syria, making it one of the worst disasters to hit the region in nearly a century.

The quake killed more than 3,300 people in Syria, according to health ministry figures and a rescue team.

The conflict in Syria began in 2011 with the brutal suppression of peaceful protests and has progressed to draw in foreign powers and global jihadists.

Nearly half a million people have been killed, and the conflict has forced almost half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes, with many forced to seek refuge in Turkey.

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