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UN launches $6.5bn Syria appeal UN launches $6.5bn Syria appeal
(about 3 hours later)
The UN has launched its biggest appeal yet for humanitarian aid to Syria after exhausting funds raised for 2013, with a warning that nearly three-quarters of the country's population will need humanitarian support next year. The UN has launched its biggest ever appeal for humanitarian aid to Syria after exhausting funds raised for this year, and said nearly three-quarters of the country's population will need help in 2014.
The global body is aiming to raise a total of $6.5bn (£4bn) for Syria alone – 50% more than the $4bn target it set during its last appeal in June, which was only 60% funded. It estimates that close to half of Syria's population has been displaced, while the World Food Programme says a similar number need "urgent, life-saving food assistance".
The UN estimates that close to half of Syria's population has already been displaced, while the World Food Programme says a similar number need "urgent, life saving food assistance". Former UK foreign secretary David Milliband, now president of the International Rescue Committee, said large parts of the Syrian population were threatened by starvation. The former British foreign secretary David Miliband, now president of the International Rescue Committee, said large parts of the Syrian population were threatened by starvation.
The staggering scale of suffering has risen constantly throughout the past two years as war has taken hold across Syria, its impact reverberating widely across the region. More than 2.3 million refugees have fled to neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and the Kurdish north of Iraq, where many have struggled to find shelter, heating and food as winter has taken hold. The UN aims to raise a total of $6.5bn (£4bn) for Syria alone, 50% more than the $4bn target it set during its last appeal in June, which was only 60% funded.
UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said the ever-deteriorating situation was "one of the biggest crises in modern times". She added that Syrian refugees "think the world has forgotten about them". More than 2.3 million refugees have fled to neighbouring Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and the Kurdish north of Iraq, where many have struggled to find shelter, heating and food.
Milliband described the conflict as "the defining humanitarian crisis of this century so far". After 33 months of ever-increasing savagery, there is no end in sight to the war, which poses a serious risk to the unitary boundaries of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq and continues to raise sectarian tensions across the Middle East. Valerie Amos, the UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, said the ever-deteriorating situation was "one of the biggest crises in modern times". She said Syrian refugees "think the world has forgotten about them".
Medical agencies also complain of chronically limited access to war-torn parts of the country, blaming both regime forces and opposition groups for preventing deliveries of medicines and in some cases hijacking convoys. Miliband described the conflict as "the defining humanitarian crisis of this century so far".
More than 125,000 people have been killed in the fighting, which has descended into a series of stalemates in which neither side can make meaningful advances. Daily death tolls across Syria have persistently hovered near 100 or more for much of the past year, making the conflict more deadly than at any point during the height of the insurgency in neighbouring Iraq. After 33 months there is no end in sight to the war, which poses a serious threat to the unitary boundaries of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq and continues to raise sectarian tensions across the Middle East.
More than 70 people were killed in Syria's second city of Aleppo on Monday morning after Syrian air force helicopters dropped improvised explosives, known as barrel bombs, on three opposition neighbourhoods. Activists reported that 26 of those killed were children. Once entirely food- and water-sufficient, there have been signs in parts of Syrian society in recent months of malnutrition, particularly among the rural poor who have fled homes in the west and north but have remained internally displaced rather than crossing borders.
Opposition groups claimed that more than 20 such bombs were dropped on the east of the city in the early hours, in the most intense blitz for many months. Aleppo and other parts of the north have also been regularly hit by medium range ballistic missiles, including scuds, fired from nearby Damascus. Communities in parts of Aleppo and its surrounds have in recent months increasingly fallen under the sway of jihadist groups, who joined the insurgency to fight the Assad regime, but for different purposes – to transform the war in Syria into the epicentre of al-Qaida-inspired global jihad. The UN estimates that more than 6.3 million internal refugees are scattered throughout the country, a number that is expected to rise further by the middle next year.
Medical agencies complain of limited access to wartorn areas, blaming both regime forces and opposition groups for preventing deliveries of medicines and in some cases hijacking convoys.
More than 125,000 people have been killed in the fighting, which has descended into a series of stalemates in which neither side can make meaningful advances.
Daily death tolls across Syria have persistently hovered near 100 or more for much of the past year, making the war more deadly than any point during the height of the insurgency in neighbouring Iraq.
More than 90 people were killed in Syria's second city, Aleppo, on Monday morning after Syrian air force helicopters dropped improvised explosives, known as barrel bombs, on three opposition neighbourhoods. Activists reported that 26 of those killed were children.
Opposition groups claimed that more than 20 such bombs were dropped on the east of the city in the early hours, in the most intense blitz for many months. Aleppo and other parts of the north have also been hit regularly by medium-range ballistic missiles, including scuds, fired from nearby Damascus. However, single-strike death tolls such as this are rare.
A doctor in the Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, parts of which were flattened by at least two bombs, said his makeshift clinic had been overrun by parents bringing seriously wounded children to him. "It's worse than it has ever been here," he told the Guardian via Skype. "None of the people I saw were fighters. None of them were even adults."
Maria Calivis, Unicef's regional director for the Middle East and north Africa, said: "It is absolutely unacceptable for children to be targeted in this manner, whether through the use of indiscriminate weapons resulting in mass casualties or by any other means."
In recent months communities in parts of Aleppo and its surrounds have increasingly fallen under the sway of jihadist groups, who joined the insurgency to transform the war into an epicentre of al-Qaida-inspired global jihad.
In recent weeks the western-supported Free Syrian Army (FSA) has lost considerable influence due to the rise of the al-Qaida groups and a reconfiguration of many militias in the north who have united under an Islamic banner.
The stated purpose of the new group, the Islamic Front, which is understood to be a force of 45,000, is to sideline the Islamic State of Iraq and Jabhat al-Nusra groups that form the core of al-Qaida's presence in Syria.
However, last week the nascent organisation raided weapons depots of the Free Syrian Army near the Turkish border, sending the FSA leader Salim Idriss fleeing across the frontier and casting serious doubt on his group's continued relevance as a fighting force.
One mid-ranking leader of the new group said militia leaders in northern Syria had grown impatient both with the FSA and the exiled group of opposition leaders who had attempted, with little success, to act as its political wing.
"They couldn't deliver at any point," he said. "They were Europe and the US's proxies, but they were never resourced. It was clear that their backers weren't really their backers at all."
Throughout the past year humanitarian bodies have used increasingly desperate rhetoric to appeal for aid in Syria. There is concern that the crisis is yet to resonate with parts of the international community fatigued by more than a decade of death and displacement in the Middle East.
"There is a lack of awareness on the part of many about just how desperate conditions are for Syrians," said Miliband. "We can say that more than nine million people are in need there, but … it's extremely difficult to put human faces on cold numbers.
"We are all working to meet the needs of these most vulnerable, but the numbers are increasing so rapidly now, that current resources just aren't enough."
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