Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Humanitarian Disaster Casts Shadows over Aleppo, 30 Thousand Refugees Meet Unknown Fate | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Syrian refugee packs as to escape the camp after a terrorist attack. -Getty


Beirut- Humanitarian state-of-affairs in Aleppo, Syria has deteriorated within the last week reaching an unprecedented low. Accompanied by escalating violence and combat, tens of thousands of civilians were left uprooted and on the run in the past 48 hours. Atop all that, 200 thousand fighters have been reported dead last week alone.

Fierce clashes throughout the northern rural areas of Aleppo are getting hold of refugee camps which are spread along borderlines with Turkey, thus pushing the refugees inside Turkish borders where they will be faced by force and coercion by the Ankara police as to push them back into Syrian hostile grounds, a horrific fate of being caught between the worst of two evils.

The Human Rights Watch announced that over 30 thousand people have been put on the move in the last 48 hours. The Watch’s announcement pointed out that ISIS registered advancement on April 13th and 14th forced over half of the refugees in camps located east of Azaz city to escape and head for other safer camps. The number of refugees who were forced to flee is estimated to be over 60 thousand people.

Nadim Houry, Human Rights Watch’s deputy director of its Middle East and North Africa division, told Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that the only valid solution in the meantime is to relief the tens of thousands of refugees stuck on the Syrian north borders and open up Turkish borders, taking into consideration the current circumstances occurring over the past month which prove that the Syrian border zone is not safe and that all armed parties are sparing no effort when trying to take control over it.

Houri added that ISIS, over the last few hours, had taken control over two other camps located among Aleppo’s northern camps and that the clashes ripping through the governorate proves that civilians are hanging on top of a boiling cauldron and are in need of immediate relief.

He carried on saying that thirty thousand cases have moved towards Azaz in the last 48 hours, only to join another 70 thousand suffering refugees who originally were settled there. However, Houri explained that the camps are not safe havens either, and do not meet the bare necessities for survival.