18.10.2012. CAIRO - United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)'s Mohamed Dayri has said on Thursday that
there are 150,000 Syrian refugees in Egypt.
“Despite this, only 4,800 Syrians have registered with the refugee agency in
Cairo,” he added in a Cairo meeting on the humanitarian situation in Syria and
neighbouring countries.
Dayri, who said that they reside mainly in Cairo and Alexandria, called on Egypt to help the agency deal with the increasing number of Syrian refugees here. Meanwhile, over 340,000 Syrians have crossed the border to Syria's neighbours – Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon. Seventy-five per cent of them are women and children.
"This number could hit 710,000 by the end of the year," warned Panos Moumtzis, the Regional Refugee Co-ordinator for Syrian Refugees. "We suffer a problem in funding. We need urgent funds of $487 million to provide these refugees’ basic needs. At the moment, we only have $141.5 million.”
