A stormy episode bringing freezing temperatures and heavy snowfalls hit several countries in the Levant, including Syria and Lebanon, to the chagrin of refugees and displaced people in this region.
The snow is a “curse”, even “imminent danger” writes the pan-Arab site As-Safir Al-Arabi, “when it falls on the poor, the displaced and the refugees in the camps”.
For several days, Lebanon, Syria and other countries in the region, such as Iraq or Jordan, have been plunged into an exceptional cold wave – “the most intense for thirty years”, writes the pan-Arab site – at a time when their inhabitants “experience the harshest economic and living conditions”.
Main victims of this freezing weather: the poorest living “in dilapidated houses, sheet metal houses or in refugee tents that offer no protection from cold or heat”.
During the week of January 17 to 23, the storm caused the death of at least three Syrian children in camps for displaced people in northern Syria: both in Idlib, where more than 1 million displaced Syrians live, and in in Aleppo.
Some 6.7 million Syrians have been internally displaced due to the conflict that has ravaged the country since 2011. Almost as many Syrian nationals (5.6 million) have found refuge in neighboring countries (Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq).
In addition to the current climatic conditions, more than 1 million Syrian refugees living in Lebanon are also suffering from the unprecedented economic crisis affecting their host country, where electricity and fuel are regularly running out.
Source
Born in 2011-2012, in the middle of the “Arab Spring”, the website came to replace the left-wing Lebanese daily As-Safir, who decided to stop publication. As-Safir Al-Arabi presents itself as a pan-Arab, militant and left-wing site,
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