UN says more than 3 million have fled Syria

Number of refugees has surged by one million in the past year, and more than 6 million inside the country have been displaced by the civil war that began in 2011.

A Syrian refugee family from Aleppo take shelter during a rainy day in Istanbul. Bulent Kilic / AFP / March 8, 2014

GENEVA // The civil war in Syria has created three million refugees, more than a million of them in the past year, in the greatest crisis in the UN refugee agency’s 64-year history.

About one in every eight Syrians has fled, and 6.5 million others have been displaced within Syria since the conflict began in March 2011. More than half of all those uprooted are children.

Before the uprising against Bashar Al Assad began, Syria had a population of 23 million.

“The Syria crisis has become the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era, yet the world is failing to meet the needs of refugees and the countries hosting them,” said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres.

The agency said the Syrian crisis was record-breaking in terms of the size and scope of the Dh14 billion operation needed to care for the refugees.

The recent surge in fighting appears to be worsening the already desperate situation for Syrian refugees, the agency said, as the extremist group ISIL expands its control of broad areas straddling the Syria-Iraq border and terrorises rivals and civilians in both countries.

Many of the new arrivals in Jordan come from the northern province of Aleppo and the north-eastern region of Raqqa, a stronghold of ISIL.

An independent UN commission has said the group is systematically carrying out widespread bombings, beheadings and mass killings that amount to crimes against humanity in both areas.

Angelina Jolie, the UN’s refugee agency special envoy, said international stability was steadily bleeding away in Syria. “Three million refugees is not just another statistic. It is a searing indictment of our collective failure to end the war in Syria,” the actor said.

The UN commission investigating potential war crimes in Syria said on Wednesday that the Assad regime probably used chlorine gas to attack civilians, who are bearing the brunt of a civil war that has killed more than 190,000 people and destabilised the region.

The massive numbers of Syrians fleeing the civil war has stretched the resources of neighbouring countries and raised fears of violence spreading in the region.

The UN estimates there are nearly 35,000 people awaiting registration as refugees, and hundreds of thousands who are not registered.

The refugee agency and other aid groups say an increasing number of families are arriving in other countries in shockingly poor condition, exhausted and scared and with almost no financial savings left after having been on the run for a year or more.

In eastern Jordan, for example, the agency said refugees crossing the desert were forced to pay smugglers US$100 (Dh367) a person or more to be taken to safety.

Lebanon hosts 1.14 million Syrian refugees, the single highest concentration. Turkey has 815,000 and Jordan has 608,000.

Meanwhile, Syrian rebels surrounded dozens of defiant Filipino peacekeepers in Golan Heights yesterday and demanded they surrender their weapons, hours after taking 44 Fijian soldiers hostage, authorities said.

Seventy-five Filipino members of a UN peacekeeping force were defending two posts on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, and were prepared to fight back rather than surrender, their commander in Manila said.

“We can use deadly force in defence of the UN facilities,” Col Roberto Ancan said.

“I [would] just like to emphasise our troops are... well-disciplined warrior peacekeepers.”

Syrian rebels, including fighters from the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front, stormed a Golan Heights crossing at Quneitra on Wednesday, sparking an exchange of gunfire with Israeli troops.

Quneitra is the only crossing between the Syrian and the Israeli-controlled side of the plateau.

The rebels captured 44 Fijian members of the UN Disengagement Observer Force on Thursday, forcing them to surrender their weapons then taking them hostage.

Fijian prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama said that talks were under way to release the hostages, and they were believed to be safe.

* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse