First wave of Syrian refugees fleeing to Kurdistan Region reaches nearly 1000
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) Joint Crisis Coordination Centre (JCC) announced that on late Tuesday night, 472 new Syrian refugees had arrived in the Kurdistan Region to escape the ongoing Turkish military assault on northern Syria. This brings the total number since Monday, when they began crossing, to 930.
We are expecting 140 Syrian refugee families to arrive in Bardarash, which is a total of 400 individuals.” said Khalil Mahmood, mayor of Bardarash district.
“We have made the proper preparations in coordination with the Board of Relief and Humanities Affairs in Duhok to receive the refugees,” he added, explaining that they would be transferred to settle in Bardarash camp, built in 2014 to house large numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing the Islamic State in Mosul.
Hoshang Mohammed, Director General of the JCC, affirmed that the agency “met with international organizations and more than 100 of them expressed their readiness to provide humanitarian aid.”
Bardarash district falls between the cities of Duhok, Mosul, and Erbil and that falls under the provincial administration of Duhok. Another camp located in the area, known as Gawilan, is populated by Syrian refugees who escaped conflict in Syria in previous years.
On Tuesday, the Kurdish-led self-administration in northern Syria said that at least 275,000 civilians, including 70,000 children, have been displaced from areas along the Syrian-Turkish border over the past week since Ankara's assault began.
Read More: Humanitarian crisis in northern Syria worsened amid intensified Turkish bombing
"Seven days after the start of the Turkish aggression...the humanitarian situation of our displaced people from the areas affected by the aggression has worsened, amid the complete interruption of humanitarian aid and the suspension of all international organizations and the withdrawal of their staff from the region,” read a statement.
The first group of Syrian refugees from the anticipated mass influx of people expected to hit the Kurdistan Region came on Monday as 180 crossed the Fishkhabour border in Duhok province.
Read More: First group of Syrian refugees arrive in Kurdistan Region
After crossing the border, refugees registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) before being transferred to the massive Domiz refugee camp in Duhok by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The JCC's Mohammed told Kurdistan 24, “We expect more than a quarter-million refugees in the worst-case scenario. This will add an additional burden on the already depleted services and capacities” of the KRG.
The current number of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Kurdistan Region is 1,041,000 individuals, living either inside camps or in host communities and informal settlements. Out of that number, 229,000 of them are Syrian refugees who left their homes to escape the country’s protracted civil war or the brutal rule of the Islamic State.
Editing by John J. Catherine
