Up to 5.3 million people are at risk of being homeless in Syria after the deadly earthquake that devastated entire regions of the country and neighboring Turkey, a senior UN official warned on Friday.
“Up to 5.3 million people in Syria could be left without a place to live because of the earthquake,” Sivanka Dhanapala, representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told a conference press in Damascus. He then clarified the number, estimating it at 5.37 million people.
Nearly 23,000 victims
“This is a colossal figure and applies to a population that has already suffered mass displacement” due to the civil war that has raged in Syria since 2011, Dhanapala added. “For Syria, this is a crisis within a crisis. (Syria has had) economic shocks, Covid-19 and is currently experiencing a harsh winter,” he recalled.
Survivors of the violent earthquake that shook Syria and neighboring Turkey at dawn on Monday are being sent to camps built for people displaced by the war. The earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.8, killed nearly 23,000 people, including more than 3,300 in Syria, according to the latest official reports.