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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, August 15 (UNHCR) - The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) is sending the largest shipment of emergency relief items so far this year from its Dubai-based global stockpile intended for persons uprooted within Syria.
The relief items, traveling in 33 trucks, are leaving Dubai beginning today (15 August).
Amongst the items being shipped across the Arabian peninsula from Dubai are blankets for 100,000 people, more than 27,000 kitchen sets for some 139,000 people and 50,000 jerry cans that will help more than 125,000 people.
The relief items will travel by road across the UAE and Saudi Arabia for delivery to UNHCR's forward warehouse in Jordan, from where the goods will be sent into Syria.
"UNHCR is working inside Syria and in neighbouring countries to help people uprooted by the war," said UNHCR's Amin Awad from Amman. Awad is Director of the agency Bureau for the Middle East and North Africa and Regional Refugee Coordinator.
"This shipment of relief items will ensure thousands of vulnerable Syrian families have the necessary aid they require amidst the horrific conflict," Awad declared.
Over 2013, UNHCR has distributed urgently needed relief items to more than 1.6 million people inside Syria, many of them displaced by the conflict that is now in its third year. To-date, UNHCR field teams have distributed more than 3.6 million relief items inside Syria including within many besieged areas.
"In the last week UNHCR and its partners sent a convoy of nine trucks into the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib with UNHCR relief items for 10,000 people living in the city that is still the scene of active fighting," said Tarik Kurdi, UNHCR Representative in Syria.
In Damascus, UNHCR is currently completing its second distribution of cash assistance to internally displaced Syrians. So far this year, more than 36,000 people from more than 6,900 families have been assisted in Damascus with aid totalling more than US$980,000 in Syrian Pounds. Most of the internally displaced persons in Damascus that qualify for the UNHCR cash assistance program fled Adra, a city northeast of the Syrian capital. Throughout Syria, UNHCR cash assistance has reached more than 65,000 people from more than 12,400 families in 2013.
"UNHCR has established vulnerability criteria and carefully screens internally displaced persons to ensure they qualify for the cash aid programme," UNHCR Representative Tarik Kurdi said from Damascus. "Many of the displaced persons we are assisting are persons with disabilities or serious medical conditions."
UNHCR's 33 truck shipment of relief items leaving Dubai starting on Thursday is part of the UN refugee agency's efforts to help prepare many of Syria's more than 4.25 million internally displaced persons for the upcoming winter. Overall, relief agencies estimate that there are more than 6.8 million people in need of humanitarian assistance within Syria.
UNHCR also oversees aid to more than 1.9 million Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries, including more than 684,000 in Lebanon, 516,000 in Jordan, some 434,000 in Turkey, 154,000 in Iraq and 107,000 in Egypt.
UNHCR's regional programmes to help Syrian refugees and vulnerable persons caught inside the war-torn country is so far only 38 percent funded.
Dubai's International Humanitarian City, an initiative of the government of Dubai and Her Royal Highness Princess Haya, is the UN refugee agency's main global hub for aid items with stocks of blankets, tents, kitchen sets and other items for more than 350,000 people.
For media inquiries:
Dubai, UAE: Mohammed Abu Asaker: mob. +971-50-621-3552 Amman, Jordan: Peter Kessler: mob. +962-79-631-7901 Damascus, Syria: Imane Sednaoui: mob. +963-932-518-030
