Fighting displaces 45,000 in southern Syria: UN

Air strikes and ground fighting in southern Syria have forced at least 45,000 people to flee, the United Nations said today, the largest displacement in the area so far.

"Over the last couple of days we saw a very large number of people who fled because of the ongoing hostilities, because of the shelling and fighting in that area," said Linda Tom, spokeswoman for the UN humanitarian coordination office in Syria.

"We haven't seen massive displacement in this scale in Daraa," the main province in the south, Tom told AFP.