3m f lee Syria in UN’s worst aid crisis

SYRIA was declared the biggest humanitarian crisis in United Nations history yesterday following a war which has forced three million people to flee.

Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said a million Syrians have fled in the past year alone.

The numbers who have escaped across the border represent 12 per cent of the population, almost half of them children.

Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie, the UN’s special envoy for refugees, said Syria was increasingly unstable.

She said: “Three million refugees is not just another statistic.

Barbaric

“It is a searing indictment of our collective failure to end the war in Syria.”

The fighting began three years ago in the Arab Spring, when street protests against President Bashar al-Assad turned into an armed rebellion.

But the barbaric forces of the Islamic State have taken conflict to a new level, with beheadings and crucifixions casually meted out every day.

Many refugees have fled to Jordan from the IS stronghold of Raqqa, in the north- east.

UN officials plan to spend £ 2.2billion tackling the crisis.

But EU aid chief Kristalina Georgieva warned: “There is a risk that the victims of the Syrian crisis and their needs will slip from the public eye.”