Over the two year civil war raging in Syria, the number of refugees crossing the border to neighboring countries surpassed 1 million, the United Nations Refugee agency announced, adding that the resources available to help them are dangerously low.
The UN agency estimates that around 10,000 Syrians are escaping from their country every day, and more than half of them are children, most of whom are under age 11.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said in a statement: “With a million people in flight, millions more displaced internally, and thousands of people continuing to cross the border every day, Syria is spiraling towards full-scale disaster. The international humanitarian response capacity is dangerously stretched. This tragedy has to be stopped.”
The NY Times reported that the UN has received only about 20 percent of the $1.5 billion it requested in December to pay for relief efforts for some four million people in need of aid inside Syria, in addition to the million who have left.