GENEVA, July 27 (Xinhua) -- As many as 182,600 people were currently displaced from their homes and in urgent need of humanitarian assistance after five weeks of sustained hostilities in Syria's southwestern governorates of Dara'a, Quneitra and Sweida, the UN said Friday.
Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told a press briefing here Friday that the United Nations was also concerned about the humanitarian situation for some 100,000 people in the Golan area who continued to face hostilities.
The government of Syria had made rapid territorial gains in recent weeks and currently only a stretch of land near the Golan area was under control of a non-State armed group while an area spanning some 200 square kilometers further south towards the Jordanian border remain under control of the ISIL-affiliated Jaysh Khaled Bin Walid group (JKBW).
The United Nations estimated that prior to the escalation of hostilities, some 55,000 people lived in the area now under JKBW control, and it was concerned by the restrictions the group was imposing on the movement of civilians trying to leave the area, although several thousand had managed to flee.
"Those who remained were now subject to increasing hostilities and between July 21 and 23 intense airstrikes had been reported in the area with reports of several civilian casualties, including women and children," Jens said.
According to him, humanitarian relief was running out and humanitarian partners did not have unhindered access to the people in need or to the stockpiles in their warehouses.
Also Cross-border convoys from Jordan had been on hold for over a month due to the deteriorating situation inside southwestern Syria, he added.
