UNITED NATIONS: Five thousand people a month are dying in Syria’s war, which has now generated the worst refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, UN officials said yesterday.
A host of top officials called on the divided UN Security Council to take stronger action to deal with the fallout from the two-year-old civil war, in which up to 100,000 people are believed to have died.
“The extremely high rate of killings nowadays — approximately 5,000 a month — demonstrates the drastic deterioration of the conflict,” UN assistant secretary general for human rights Ivan Simonovic told a council meeting.
“In Syria today, serious human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity are the rule,” Simonovic declared. Nearly 1.8 million people are now registered with the UN in countries around Syria and an average of 6,000 people a day are now fleeing, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said.
“We have not seen a refugee outflow escalate at such a frightening rate since the Rwandan genocide almost 20 years ago,” Guterres added. More than two million Rwandans fled the 1994 genocide.
He said the acceptance of refugees by Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and other countries was “saving hundreds of thousands of lives.”
UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said the international community may have to consider cross-border operations to get aid into Syria.
He added that $3.1bn was still needed for operations in and around Syria for the rest of the year. He said four million people inside Syria need assistance.
AFP
