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| UNHCR chief spokesperson Melissa Fleming briefing reporters in Geneva [PHOTO: UNifeed] |
Geneva: Staff from the UN refugee agency have visited Homs this week
and said thousands of displaced people are living in dire conditions in the
conflict-battered Syrian city.
The UNHCR team, whose two-day mission ended on Thursday
evening, said many people were staying in unheated communal shelters and they
also reported that half of the city's hospitals were not functional and there
were severe shortages of basic supplies ranging from medicine to blankets,
winter clothes and children's shoes.
The team, led by UNHCR Representative in Syria Tarik Kurdi,
also said the agency's partner, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), had
registered 250,000 displaced people in and around the city, normally home to 1
million people.
"During their mission, the team met SARC counterparts
and briefed local officials on UNHCR's operations in the area, including the
provision of non-food aid supplies", the UNHCR spokesperson, Melissa
Fleming, told journalists in Geneva. The team included UNHCR
Syria's shelter coordinator to assess the feasibility to engage in shelter
rehabilitation.
UNHCR, which has more than 350 staff in five locations
across Syria, has been present since mid-November in the city, but has been
providing assistance there through SARC since June. The team visited two
communal buildings, one housing 70 families (400 individuals) and another one
with more than 400 families, the largest such shelter in Homs.
In Jordan, arriving Syrian refugees continue to tell UNHCR
they were targeted en route to the border.
"UNHCR calls on all sides to ensure that civilians have
access to safe passage," Fleming stressed.
"Many families tell us that because the journey out is so dangerous
that they are sedating their children along the way so as to suppress their
cries and to mitigate the possibility that they will be heard as they're trying
to escape and further targeted."
She went on to say ""We do have accounts from
people that they have come as a family, come as a group of friends and some
members of the group were singled out en route and didn't make it." -UNifeed