The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that fear of the new Coronavirus prompted tens of thousands of displaced Syrians who had fled from Idlib governorate in the northwest of the country, to return to their homes, even if this led to their being harmed by the armed conflict there.
On March 15, Russia and Turkey reached an agreement on a ceasefire in the Idlib and Aleppo regions, and military operations have since ceased.
Despite some sporadic incidents, the region was still witnessing a state of relative calm, until tens of thousands of people began returning to it.
These people fear the infection of the Coronavirus in areas that contain about four million local residents and displaced people, who live in crowded places suffering from unstable health conditions.
Deputy United Nations Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria crisis, Mark Coates, posted on his Twitter account, a video sequence showing humanitarian workers installing model building installations near the major camps in the Idlib area.
Coates emphasized that “these facilities will be used as isolation centers for cases of COVID-19” if necessary.
The United Nations indicated that, during the past weeks, some 126.000 displaced civilians from Syria have returned to the outskirts of Idlib and Aleppo, within Turkish-controlled areas and that are still outside the control of the Syrian regime.
Among these displaced people, there are about 106.000 people who have returned to the small towns and villages from which they fled between last December and February, during the widespread attack by the Syrian regime and Russian forces in the area.
“After the closure of schools in Syria due to the coronavirus pandemic, teachers and children have found new ways to deal with the matter, with the support of UNICEF, where children can continue their lessons using their parents’ smartphones”, according to a UN official.
The United Nations indicated that 20.000 more civilians have returned to refugee camps and temporary housing where they previously lived. These people are not originals of Idlib and Aleppo but are displaced from other areas.
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