DUBAI: The UN’s chief humanitarian coordinators for Syria, on a Gulf tour to seek aid, have warned that already scarce resources for the growing number of displaced in the war-torn country are quickly drying up.
The UN’s regional refugee coordinator, Panos Mumtzis, said in Dubai that the aid effort was hit by a “significant funding shortfall,” adding that financial support is needed for shelter, winter preparation, health and water.
The UN estimates some half a million Syrians have fled the country. About 335,000 of them are registered refugees who have escaped to neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq.
By the end of the year, the UN expects the number of registered refugees to more than double to around 710,000 refugees. Inside Syria, there are an estimated 1.2 million displaced Syrians living in ill-equipped public buildings. “This is no longer business as usual. We have moved into an emergency situation. It is a crisis,” said Mumtzis of the 18-month uprising against President Bashar Al Assad’s regime that shows no signs of abating. “When we get 2,000 to 3,000 refugees per day crossing the border continuously now for two months, this is really serious.”
The UN has requested $488 million for Syrian refugee assistance alone. So far $142m, only 29 percent, has been provided.
Meanwhile, Shia militant group Hezbollah denied yesterday that it has sent its fighters into Syria to help its ally, President Bashar Al Assad, to help quell the rebellion there. “We did not fight alongside the regime until now. The regime did not ask us to do so and also who says that doing so is in Lebanon’s interest?” Sayyad Hassan Nasrallah, the chief of Hezbollah said yesterday.
Amid continuing fighting in Syria, a powerful blast rocked the military justice building in Damascus last evening, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported, as state television spoke of a terrorist attack.
The Observatory said the blast in the western Mazzeh district of the capital occurred in front of the military justice building which is near the ministry of higher education. AGENCIES
