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More than 5 million people in Syria may have been left homeless following the earthquake that struck the country and Turkey on Monday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said Friday.
“UNHCR is focusing very much on shelter and relief items, ensuring that collective centers that displaced have gone to have adequate facilities, as well as tents, plastic sheeting, thermal blankets, sleeping mats, winter clothing and so on,” said Sivanka Dhanapala, a UNHCR representative in Syria.
“For Syria, this is a crisis within a crisis,” Dhanapala said. “We’ve had economic shocks, Covid, and are now in the depths of winter, with blizzards raging in the affected areas.”
The United Nations agency said 6.8 million people were already displaced internally within the country since the start of the civil war that ripped through Syria in 2011.
“All this, of course, impacts the access for aid,” Dhanapala said. “Roads have been damaged and that hampers us trying to reach people. It’s been very, very difficult.”
Based on “a preliminary estimate,” the refugee organization said “5.37 million people affected by the quake will need shelter assistance in the whole of Syria.”
“That is a huge number and comes to a population already suffering mass displacement,” according to Dhanapala.
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