TWO MILLION SYRIANS LIVE IN BESIEGED AREAS: UN

        Damascus, 4 Dul Hijjah 1434/10 October 2013 (MINA) – The United Nations says about two million people in Syria are living in besieged areas as a result of the ongoing violence in the Arab country.

         The remarks were made by the United Nations Under-Secretary- General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos on Thursday.

        “We estimate that there are two million people in besieged areas we have not been able to reach and there are terrible stories of those people running out of food, of people being injured, who are not able or allowed to leave.”

         This comes shortly after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the UN Security Council (UNSC) had made a “strong commitment to relieve the humanitarian situation” in Syria, but it needed to complete the commitment with action.

         In a statement on October 2, the UNSC urged all parties to take control of the conflict and help UN agencies and private aid groups “to take immediate steps to facilitate the expansion of humanitarian relief operations.”

        Amos welcomed the statement, saying, “Ultimately, the international community must find a lasting political solution to end the suffering of ordinary Syrians.” She also underscored the importance of declaring a ceasefire as the top priority to end the current situation in the country, Press TV reported as monitored by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).

          Syria has been gripped by deadly unrest since 2011. According to reports, the Western powers and their regional allies — especially Qatar,  Saudi Arabia, and Turkey — are supporting the militants operating inside Syria.

          Refugees of the Syrian civil war, widely referred as the Syrian refugees, are Syrian nationals, who have fled Syria with the escalation of the Syrian civil war.

         To escape the violence, more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees have fled the country to neighboring Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, while thousands also ended up in more distant countries of the Caucasus, the Persian Gulf and North Africa.

          The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that the number of registered Syrian refugees had reached over 200,000, exceeding the UNHCR estimate of 185,000 for the entire year. Also according to the United Nations, 6 million people inside Syrians needed help and about 4 million Syrians were internally displaced because of the Syrian civil war.

         By early 2013 the UNHCR announced that the number of refugees had topped 1 million, and by March 2013 had risen to 1,204,707 people. A spokeswoman for UNHCR, Sybilla Wilkes, also reported that the rate of flight from Syria was increasing. “In March an average of 10,000 people crossing per day. In February it was 8,000. In January it was 5,000. The numbers keep going up and up.  ( T/P04/E1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)