5.3 Million In Syria May Be Homeless After Devastating Earthquake

A United Nations official said on Friday that 5.3 million people in Syria might have been left homeless by a devastating earthquake that rocked the region this week. 

“As many as 5.3 million people in Syria may have been left homeless by the earthquake,” the Syria representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sivanka Dhanapala, told a press briefing.

Approximately 5.37 million people are estimated to require shelter assistance across the country as a result of the earthquake, according to the UN. “That is a huge number and comes to a population already suffering mass displacement,” he said. “For Syria, this is a crisis within a crisis. We’ve had economic shocks, Covid, and are now in the depths of winter.”

Survivors of the earthquake have crowded into camps set up for people displaced by the nearly 12-year war from other parts of Syria. Many have lost their homes or are too afraid to return to damaged buildings. Almost 24,000 people died in the quake in Turkey and Syria, one of the worst disasters to hit the region in a century.

More than 3,300 people have died in Syria since the earthquake, according to statistics from the Ministry of Health and the Rescue Committee. 

A brutal crackdown on peaceful protests in Syria began in 2011 and escalated to draw in foreign powers and global jihadists. Nearly half a million people have been killed, and the conflict has driven half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes, with many taking refuge in Turkey.

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