More than 6,500 children were forced to flee daily in northwestern Syria during the past week, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said.
The organization added that the crisis in northwestern Syria is impeding efforts to protect children in an unprecedented manner, and stated that the total number of displaced children exceeds three hundred thousand children since the beginning of last December.
UNICEF estimates that one million two hundred thousand children are in urgent need of food, water and medicine.
The organization said that children are paying the highest price as a result of this crisis. During the past year, nine hundred children were killed, more than 75% of them were in the northwest, and Idlib recorded the largest number of dead and injured children.
UNICEF called on all parties to immediately stop fighting, and to deliver the necessary and unimpeded humanitarian assistance to every child in need.
UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million children are in urgent need of food, water and medicine (Reuters) |
On the other hand, the director of the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Organization in the city of Rihaniyah, Yusuf Tonj, said that the humanitarian organizations are unable to cover the main needs of all the displaced people present at the Syrian-Turkish border, in light of the large numbers that have fled during the past weeks.
Tong added - in an interview with Al-Jazeera - that the total aid currently provided to the displaced via the Bab Al-Hawa crossing north of Idlib is sufficient to cover only 40% of the needs of about half a million displaced people who fled due to the air and ground military attack by the regime forces and Russia on the southern Idlib countryside and western Aleppo .
With the support of intense Russian air strikes, the regime forces regained the city of Maarat al-Numan (the second largest city in Idlib) and dozens of towns recently, in a major campaign that contributed to stoking tension between Ankara and Moscow, and raised the specter of a new refugee crisis.
A UN report said that about 390,000 fled northwestern Syria between December 1 and January 27, 80 percent of them women and children.