Five-year-old girl killed amid rise in fires at Syrian refugee camps

A five year old Syrian girl was killed and her two brothers injured on Tuesday when a fire broke out in an IDP camp near Idlib city, amid a worrying rise in fires at camps for displaced people in northwestern Syria.

Mark Cutts, the UN’s Deputy Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria, tweeted that so far 340 fires had been reported in camps for displaced people in Syria in 2022, with six people killed and 85 injured.

“More funding & support is urgently needed to provide safer living conditions for the millions of displaced people in Syria,” he said.

#Syria: The horrific fire that killed a 5-year-old girl in a camp in Idlib last night is a reminder of the dangers faced by people living in tents. More funding & support is urgently needed to provide safer living conditions for the millions of displaced people in Syria pic.twitter.com/RAst0LC3xM

— Mark Cutts (@MarkCutts) July 27, 2022

The Syrian Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, said that they had put out six fires in camps in northern Syria on Tuesday alone.

The Syrian Response Coordinators Team said that the blaze in the IDP camp had burned three tents.

It said that fires were a “horrific nightmare” which displaced people were constantly exposed to, adding that high temperatures recorded in recent days had greatly increased the risk of fires, especially with the presence of generators and cooking stoves in the camps.

Today, July 26, #WhiteHelmets the firefighting teams extinguished six fires in various areas of the northwestern regions of the NW #Syria, including three farming fires, a fire in a power station, a fire in a primitive fuel refinery station, and a home fire. pic.twitter.com/IfDboHeKgE

— The White Helmets (@SyriaCivilDef) July 26, 2022

“The increase in fires in camps amid the constant calls for improving conditions for displaced people shows the continued lack of reaction to the suffering of civilians, which has been going on for years,” the group said in a Facebook post.

The Syrian conflict broke out in 2011, following the brutal repression of peaceful protests by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Over 500,000 people have been killed, with around 6.7 million internally displaced and a further 6.6 million fleeing the country.