More than five million people have fled Syria’s civil war to neighbouring countries according to data collected by the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR and the government of Turkey, Turkish daily Hurriyet reported on Thursday.
A total of 5,018,168 people have now taken refuge in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt and the victory by the Syrian government and its Russian allies against rebels in the northern city of Aleppo in December has accelerated the exodus, according to the data.
Millions more people have fled to other parts of Syria, including tens of thousands this month, mainly women and children trying to escape a rebel offensive northwest of the city of Hama.
Syrians have also fled to Europe in large numbers, making 884,461 asylum claims between April 2011 and October 2016. Almost two-thirds of the claims were in Germany or Sweden, the data showed.
“We still have a long road to travel in expanding resettlement and the number and range of complementary pathways available for refugees,” UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said on Thursday.
Although nations pledged to resettle 500,000 Syrian refugees at a summit in Geneva on 30 March last year, to date only 250,000 places have been made available, UNHCR said.
UNHCR estimates that almost 1.2 million refugees will need resettlement in 2017, 40 percent of whom are Syrians.
