Damascus, Syria.- More than 5 million people in Syria could be left homeless due to the powerful earthquake that shook the northwest of the country and also Turkey on Monday, a United Nations official said on Friday.
“Up to 5.3 million people in Syria could have been left without a place to live because of the earthquake,” Sivanka Dhanapala, representative in the country of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Acnur), warned the press in Damascus.
The representative said that according to UN calculations, 5.37 million victims will need help to stay in different parts of Syria.
“This is a very high number, and it affects a population that was already suffering massive displacement,” he added.
According to him, what has happened now is “a crisis within a crisis”, after the economic problems, the Covid-19 and the rigors of winter, which add to the long civil war that began in 2011.
The survivors of the earthquake in Syria went to the camps created for those displaced by the civil war. Many lost their homes or are afraid to return to quake-damaged buildings.
The quake cost the lives of more than 23 thousand people, of which more than 3 thousand 500 in Syrian territory. About half a million people died in the Syrian war.
The war forced nearly half of the country’s pre-war population to flee their homes. Many of them found shelter in neighboring Turkey.
