Geneva: The number of refugees who have fled Syria has reached more than 250,000, the United Nations said Tuesday, calling the humanitarian problems sparked by the conflict “our biggest crisis”. “Latest figures show that more than a quarter of a million Syrian refugees (253,106 people) have now been registered in the surrounding region, or are awaiting registration,” UN Refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards said.
“The complexity of the crisis is one of the aspects which sets it apart and the speed with which people have fled Syria,” he added.
The fact that 100,000 people had fled the country into neighbouring countries in the space of a month made it “an extraordinary acceleration of this crisis”, Edwards said. In Jordan, where the UNHCR’s High Commissioner Antonio Guterres is accompanying the agency’s Special Envoy, actress Angelina Jolie, there are 85,197 registered refugees, with a further 35,961 awaiting processing. Jolie arrived in Jordan last evening accompanied by a Jordanian military escort.
She visited displaced Syrian families who recently crossed the border. She is due to visit the Al-Zaatri refugee camp later today and then King Abdullah of Jordan, Prime Minister Fayez Tarawneh and foreign affairs minister Nasser Judeh.
“Angelina Jolie is our special envoy and she works with us on strategic issues and this is an enormously important visit; it’s really in many senses our biggest crisis at the moment so her visit flows from that and the High Commissioner’s too,” Edwards said. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was seeking to reinforce its activities in Homs, a region of 2.2 million people, where hospitals were “overwhelmed with patients”. “The humanitarian situation is grave and continues to deteriorate,” said spokesman Tarik Jasarevic in Geneva. (AFP)