3 million Syrians now refugees

More than 3 million Syrians have fled the civil war ravaging their country to become refugees – a million of them in the past year alone, the United Nations said Friday, August 29. Less than a year ago, the number of registered Syrian refugees stood at two million, UNHCR said, pointing to reports of “increasingly horrifying conditions inside the country” to explain the surge. In addition to the refugees, the violence has also displaced 6.5 million people within the country, meaning that nearly 50% of all Syrians have been forced to flee their homes, UNHCR said – more than half of them children. More than 191,000 people have also died from the conflict, which started March 2011.

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