The head of medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Saturday Syria’s neighbors should keep their borders open to allow people to flee the war-torn country.
“We need to ensure that the border between Syria and other neighboring countries remains open. It is a lifeline and people should have the right to flee conflicts,” Jerome Oberreit told AFP.
He was speaking after more than 28 civilians including women and children were killed in an attack on a camp for displaced Syrians in Idlib province near the closed Turkish border.
He said the incident was “an illustration that the idea of safe zones inside Syria is dangerously false.”
MSF has said that last year alone, 94 air strikes and rocket attacks hit 63 hospitals and clinics that it supports in Syria.
Another 12 MSF-supported health facilities were hit this year, Oberreit said, but these were by no means the only ones hit inside the country.
“We are working in a very extreme environment and unfortunately a lot of other structures have been hit that are totally unnoticed,” he said.
Just last week, the bombing of the MSF-supported Al-Quds hospital in the northern city of Aleppo left at least 55 people dead, according to the latest toll from MSF.
More than 270,000 people have been killed and millions displaced in Syria’s five-year conflict since it started with the brutal repression of anti-regime protests in 2011.
Most of the refugees are in neighboring countries, notably Turkey which has become the biggest host country with between two and 2.5 million Syrians on its soil.
Nearly 1.2 million have taken refuge in Lebanon, according to official sources.
Roughly 630,000 people have moved to Jordan, according to the UNHCR, but the authorities there put their number at more than a million.
Both Jordan and Lebanon now have strict restrictions on the entry of Syrians into their territory.
Orient Net
