Ayaki Ito, UNHCR emergency chief and interregional refugee coordinator.
GENEVA:
The United Nations refugee agency declared Friday that the crisis in the Middle East constitutes a major humanitarian emergency and insisted that all fleeing civilians should be given safe passage.
The UNHCR said the crisis in the Middle East – which began on Saturday when Israel and the United States launched strikes against Iran and has spread since – had already caused large numbers of people to flee their homes.
“UNHCR has declared the escalation of the crisis in the Middle East as a major humanitarian emergency requiring an immediate response across the region,” Ayaki Ito, the agency’s emergencies chief and interregional refugee coordinator, said at a press briefing in Geneva.
“The recent escalation of hostility and attacks in the Middle East has triggered significant population movements, while clashes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border have also forced thousands of families to flee,” he said.
The affected regions are already hosting nearly 25 million people as refugees, internally displaced people or refugees recently returned from abroad, Ito said.
He said UNHCR was trying to provide life-saving assistance to affected countries in the region.
Ito said it was imperative that all civilians who need to move or cross borders “find safety and safe passage.”
New strikes rocked Iran and Lebanon on Friday, as Israel vowed to enter a new phase of the Middle East war that has rapidly expanded across the region and beyond.
