Refugee crisis worsens as winter bites

With much of Syria, Jordan and Lebanon covered in snow this week, Caritas Jordan is concerned that conditions for more than one million Syrian refugees on Jordanian territory are becoming unbearable.

Wael Suleiman, its director, reports that 200,000 people are suffering terribly in the Zaatari refugee camp and the aid agency is distributing more blankets and stoves.
He reflected that “they keep coming, even with the snow and the cold, and we cannot meet the needs of all these women, children and men fleeing war.” The same climate emergency has hit Syrian refugees in northern Lebanon, especially in snow-covered makeshift camps in the Bekaa Valley and the district of Akkar, where tens of thousands of people will be living in tents through winter.
Thousands of Syrian children envy the ­stable where Jesus was born, according to Archbishop Samir Nassar, Maronite Archbishop of Damascus. “The infernal noise of war,” said the archbishop on Tuesday, “stifles the Glory of Angels.”

Syria’s vicious conflict has forced six million Syrians from their homes – two million of them into other countries – and has left more than 100,000 people dead. On Tuesday, the United Nations launched its biggest ever appeal, as it warned that nearly three-quarters of Syrians will need humanitarian aid in 2014.

As church leaders appealed for the release of 12 nuns of the monastery of Santa Tecla in the village of Maaloula, who were abducted by rebels on 6 December, there were unconfirmed reports that the Syrian Government is negotiating with rebels for their release. The Lebanon-based Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, which oversees the monastery, has refused to comment.
Meanwhile, Syrian Bishop Lukas al-Koury, auxiliary of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, has vehemently denied inciting Syrian Christians to take up arms. The announcements attributed to him by the media “are false”, he said, and “part of the war strategies of the Syrian conflict”.