Monitoring Desk
BEIRUT: A United Nations (UN) official said on Friday that the devastating quake which rocked Turkiye and Syria this week may have made up to 5.3 million people homeless in Syria.
“Around 5.3 million people in Syria may have been made homeless by the earthquake,” the Syria representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sivanka Dhanapala, told a news briefing.
He said the UN estimated that nearly 5.37 million people affected by the quake would need shelter assistance across Syria.
“That is a big number and comes to a country already suffering mass displacement,” he said.
“For Syria, the devastation is a crisis within a crisis. We have had economic shocks, Covid-19, and are now in the depths of winter.”
Quake survivors flock to camps
Earthquake survivors have flocked to camps set up for people displaced by around 12 years of war from other parts of Syria.
Several people lost their homes or are too scared to return to damaged buildings.
Around 23,000 people have died across Turkiye and Syria because of the powerful quake, one of the worst disasters to hit the region in a century.
The quake killed over 3,300 in Syria, according to Syrian health ministry figures and a rescue group.
The Syrian conflict started in 2011 with the vicious repression of peaceful demonstrations and escalated to pull in global jihadists and foreign powers.
Around half a million people have been killed, and the conflict has forced nearly half of the country’s pre-war population displaced from their homes, with many seeking refuge in Turkiye.
