UN: Number of Syrian refugees reaches 1.1 million

The United Nations high commissioner for refugees, Antonio Guterres, said Tuesday that 1.15 million Syrians are now refugees in neighbouring countries and 3.6 million people are internally displaced. “The Syrian crisis is the most complex, the most dangerous, and with the worst humanitarian consequences of all the conflicts I’ve seen since I started eight years ago in this post,” he said in Washington, testifying to a US Senate subcommittee. Guterres noted the “staggering escalation” from 33,000 refugees outside Syria in April 2012 to 500,000 in December. He announced March 6 that the refugee count had reached 1 million. The UN earlier this month estimated 2.5 million internally displaced Syrians before Guterres’ revision to 3.6 million. Syrians displaced in and out of the country now number nearly 5 million in a country of about 20 million people. “Each one of them is a human tragedy,” Guterres said.