Turkey’s Diyanet sets up 1,000 tents for Syrians

Turkiye Diyanet Foundation said Thursday it set up 1,000 tents for Syrian refugees in northern Idlib after they fled violence in their hometown Hama.

The refugees said they had been forced to flee from their homes after a relentless barrage of airstrikes.

Some 27,000 people were now living in tent cities in towns of Babiska, El Hassan and Darkush, according to Syria Coordinator Mahmut Temelli of Turkiye Diyanet Foundation, a religious affairs body, said.

“Families fleeing Hama are in need of accommodation right now. There are families living with their livestock, some are staying on the streets, and some sleep in the open fields. Children die of cold weather,” Temelli said in a statement.

He said Diyanet Foundation also supplied food baskets, winter clothing, heating devices, blankets and other materials to refugees.

He added healthcare services were also being provided at the tent camps.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the UN.

The Syrian Center for Policy Research, however, puts the death toll from the six-year conflict at more than 470,000 people.