UN appeals for record aid to address Syria crisis

The United Nations today appealed for a record USD 12.9 billion in emergency aid, half of which is for victims of Syria's war, which is expected to generate another two million refugees next year.
The appeal came as dozens of people were reportedly killed in Aleppo when regime warplanes dropped barrels packed with explosives on rebel-held districts of the northern city, a focal point of the 33-month war.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 76 people died yesterday, among them 28 children, in the highest toll for air raids since the war started, while 10 others, including four children, were killed by the same weapons today.

A fifth child was killed today when a shell struck a school in a regime-held neighbourhood, said the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on activists and medics on the ground for its reports.
The UN's humanitarian agency OCHA, which launched the appeal for emergency aid, said the funds are needed for 2014, when the number of Syrian refugees in the Middle East will nearly double to exceed four million.
Aid will also be needed for another 9.3 million people inside the war-ravaged country, it said.

"This is a tragedy," lamented Antonio Guterres, who heads the UN refugee agency UNHCR. He described Syria's war and its regional impact as "the most dangerous crisis for global peace and security since World War II."

The UN's World Food Programme said that almost half Syria's population of 23 million "is food insecure" while nearly a third "need urgent, life-saving food assistance."
It echoed the assessment of other organisations on the plight of Syrians inside the country and in refugee camps across the Middle East, which have been battered by inclement weather over the past week.
The International Rescue Committee, an NGO, said the price of bread in Syria has soared by 500 percent since March 2011, while the cost of blankets, at $27, is prohibitively high, amounting to " 93 per cent of the average monthly income."

More than 126,000 people have been killed in the war pitting forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad against rebels fighting to topple his family's four-decade-old regime.