MORE THAN 12,000 Syrians, mostly women and children, have sought refuge in Jordan in the past six days to escape the war in their homeland, the government said today.
Some 25,000 Syrians have entered Jordan since the beginning of the year, Anmar Hmud, a government spokesman for refugee affairs told AFP. “More than 12,000 Syrians have fled to Jordan in the past six days. The majority of them were children and women,” Hmud said. “Since the beginning of this year, some 25,000 Syrians have entered the country.”
Jordan says it is hosting more than 300,000 Syrian refugees, while the UN refugee agency says 176,000 of them are UNHCR-registered. The UN has predicted that the number of Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries will double to 1.1 million by June if the civil war in Syria does not end.
Yesterday 30 people were killed in a car bomb in central Syria with another powerful blast rocking Damascus. The UN said it would conduct a major humanitarian operation in the war-torn country, with its mission to Syria describing the need for it as “enormous”, having found people in dire need of medical and alimentary aid. However yesterday the Arab league said that UN efforts to end the conflict had failed to bring even a “glimmer” of hope.
More than 60,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict which erupted in March 2011.
- © AFP 2013.
-Additional reporting by Michelle Hennessy.
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