CAIRO (AA) – Refugees fleeing war-torn Syria into Turkey and other countries have reached over 2.4 million refugee, a United Nations official told Anadolu Agency Wednesday.
The number of Syrian refugees registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Turkey and nine Arab countries has reached over 2,407,000 refugees, director of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Rachid Khalikov, currently on a visit to Cairo, told AA Wednesday.
Khalikov said that the highest numbers of registered refugees is in Syria's neighboring countries of Lebanon (882,241), Jordan (589,405) and Turkey (571,627).
The rest of the registered refugees, according to Khalikov, have fled to Iraq (213,000), Egypt (132,504) and the North Africa region (18,000), he noted.
Khalikov maintained that the actual estimate of refugees is higher than the official one since many refugees are not registered with the UNHCR.
With the conflict grinding on in Syria amid the absence of a solution on the horizon, the number would be on the rise, he asserted.
More than 100,000 people have been killed and around 9 million people have been displaced, after three years of Syria's civil war, according to the latest figures from the United Nations High Comission for Refugees (UNHCR).
Representative of the Syrian regime and opposition are currently in Switzerland for the Geneva II conference in another attempt by the international community to reach a political solution to the Syrian civil war, ongoing since 2011.
By Mustafa Youssef
englishnews@aa.com.tr
