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