Some 170,000 People Displaced from Afrin Due to Turkish Aggression: UN

GENEVA –Some 170,000 persons were displaced from Afrin area in northern Aleppo due to the Turkish aggression on the area, the United Nations has stressed, noting the harrowing conditions experienced by those displaced, SANA reported.

“The estimate now is 167,000 people have been displaced by hostilities in Afrin district,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency, told reporters in Geneva, adding that most of those who had left had gone to nearby Tal Rifaat.

According to Laerke, between 50,000 and 70,000 civilians are estimated to remain inside the city.

 The health situation there is also difficult, the World Health Organization (WHO) said, pointing out that only one of four hospitals is currently functioning.

“Children, women, and men have undertaken harrowing journeys to flee Afrin and need urgent health assistance. Our staff has met civilians who reported walking for 36 hours to reach safer areas,” the WHO’s representative in Syria Elizabeth Hoff said in a statement, referring to the acts of abuse by the forces of the Turkish regime and their mercenaries of terrorists.

Marixie Mercado, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), also said displaced people arriving at collective shelters in Nubul had described “running in the face of shelling, sleeping in the open, being separated from their families.”