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UN launches major appeal for emergency aid amid worsening Syria refugee crisis

The number of Syrian refugees in the Middle East is expected to double next year to over four million.

THE UNITED NATIONS is appealing for a record €17.8 billion in emergency aid, half of which is for victims of Syria’s war, which is expected to generate another two million refugees next year.

Today’s appeal comes as dozens of people were reportedly killed in Aleppo after regime war-planes dropped barrels packed with explosives on rebel-held districts of the northern city, a focal point of the 33-month war.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 76 people died yesterday, among them 28 children, in the highest toll for air raids since the war started, while 10 others, including four children, were killed by the same weapons today.

A fifth child was killed today when a shell struck a school in a regime-held neighbourhood, according to the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on activists and medics on the ground for its reports.

The UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA, which launched the appeal for emergency aid, said the funds are needed for 2014, when the number of Syrian refugees in the Middle East will nearly double to exceed four million.

Aid will also be needed for another 9.3 million people inside the war-ravaged country, it said.

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A Syrian refugee boy fetches water at a refugee camp in the eastern Lebanese border town of Arsal, Lebanon [Bilal Hussein/AP/Press Association Images]

“This is a tragedy,” lamented Antonio Guterres, who heads the UN refugee agency UNHCR. He described Syria’s war and its regional impact as “the most dangerous crisis for global peace and security since World War II”.

The UN’s World Food Programme said that almost half Syria’s population of 23 million “is food insecure” while nearly a third “need urgent, life-saving food assistance.”

It echoed the assessment of other organisations on the plight of Syrians inside the country and in refugee camps across the Middle East, which have been battered by inclement weather over the past week.

The International Rescue Committee, an NGO, said the price of bread in Syria has soared by 500 percent since March 2011, while the cost of blankets, at €37, is prohibitively high, amounting to “93 per cent of the average monthly income”.

image

[Bilal Hussein/AP/Press Association Images]

More than 126,000 people have been killed in the war pitting forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad against rebels fighting to topple his family’s four-decade-old regime.

Around 2.4 million refugees have already fled, mainly to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.

‘Worst crisis’ in decades

The strain on countries hosting refugees is projected to worsen next year, with OCHA now predicting the number of refugees will nearly double to 4.1 million in 2014.

OCHA said it and other international aid agencies and organisations would need a record $12.9 billion to help some 52 million people affected by 17 major crises around the world in 2014.

Nearly half of that amount will go to the Syrian conflict, with €3.12 billion needed for aid inside Syria and €5.78 billion needed for the refugees and their host communities in the region.

WFP said it was stepping up food aid next year and would also provide supplements to around 240,000 toddlers aged 6-23 months, to ensure they do not suffer from malnutrition.

image

Humanitarian aid is loaded onto a plane for Syrian refugees in Irbil airport, Iraq [STR/AP/Press Association Images]

“This is the worst humanitarian crisis that we have seen in decades, with every day more vulnerable Syrians pushed into hunger,” said WFP Syria emergency coordinator Muhannad Hadi.

The opposition Syrian National Coalition meanwhile accused the Assad regime of deliberately targeting civilians with the explosive barrel attacks.

The regime “is trying, through a savage campaign against Aleppo, to take revenge and spread chaos in civilian areas” of rebel-controlled zones, it said.

The UN Children’s Fund also condemned the attacks, with regional director Maria Calivis saying “it is absolutely unacceptable for children to be targeted in this manner.”

© – AFP 2013

Read: Syrian ‘barrel bombs’ kill 76 people including 28 children

Read: “America stands with you,” John McCain tells Ukraine protesters

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    Mute Chris O Neill Cabra
    Favourite Chris O Neill Cabra
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    Aug 17th 2015, 12:12 PM

    ”That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

    The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

    Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

    The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

    It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

    Carl Sagan

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    Mute Deborah Behan
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    Aug 17th 2015, 3:28 PM

    Amazing quote.

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    Mute Rehabmeerkat
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    Aug 17th 2015, 6:13 PM

    that’s not a quote it’s a short story

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    Mute Norman Hunter
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    Aug 17th 2015, 11:45 AM

    Amazing picture.

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    Mute luke frankus
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    Aug 17th 2015, 12:00 PM

    it makes us look like a giant marble…

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    Mute Gary
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    Aug 17th 2015, 12:30 PM

    Luke, you mean like a giant ellipsoid or an oblate spheroid.

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    Mute luke frankus
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    Aug 17th 2015, 12:32 PM

    that’s exactly what I mean, Gary.

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    Mute Bobby Neary
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    Aug 17th 2015, 11:53 AM

    I’d say he wished he brought some LSD….that would be some light show then ..

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    Mute Lindsay Price
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    Aug 17th 2015, 11:55 AM

    Yeah cause it’s not like he’s working or anything.

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    Mute Brendan
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    Aug 17th 2015, 11:50 AM

    Seen these for real and magical is the way I would describe them

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