Various United Nations humanitarian agencies, including the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), warned Tuesday that the ongoing conflict in Syria will lead to a sharp increase in the number of people needing urgent aid, including food, clean water and vital medical services.
"If the violence continues unabated, we could, in the short term, see considerably more than the current four million in need of urgent assistance and more than two million internally displaced in Syria. Organizations are struggling to reach more people, in more places, with more aid, but lack of access is still a major obstacle," OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke said addressing a news conference in Geneva.
The continued fighting between government forces and armed rebels has also disrupted health services in Syria. The UN World Health Organization (WHO) announced Tuesday that the National Hospital had been destroyed in the last few days.
"Overall, 55 per cent of the public hospitals have been damaged and more than one-third of all hospitals are out of service," Elizabeth Hoff, WHO Representative in Syria, told the news conference via telephone from Damascus.
She reported heavy fighting in the rural area around the Syrian capital city, and said that more than two thirds of the ambulances available in the country have been damaged by the continued fighting. She also accused the Syrian government of using new ambulances for military purposes.
Hoff acknowledged the urgent need for supplies and medications in Syria, but noted that doctors and other health personnel are currently unable to get into Damascus and other cities in order to provide medial treatment to the needy. She said lack of fuel as well as electricity cuts have further hampered medical treatments.
The WHO representative noted that lack of clean water and sanitation has been linked to increased reports of Hepatitis A and diarrhea. She said internally displaced persons (IDPs) are being vaccinated for Hepatitis A with available supplies, and added that reports of diagnoses of leishmaniasis, a disease caused by a type of sand fly, are also on the rise.
Meanwhile, the UN World Food Program (WFP) announced Tuesday it is scaling up its food aid operations inside Syria to reach an additional one million people in the coming months.
"In February, WFP is increasing the number of people it plans to reach from 1.5 million to 1.75 million people and is gradually building its capacity to reach two million people in March and 2.5 million vulnerable Syrians by April," the agency said in a statement.
WFP, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) and other partners have fed 1.5 million Syrians since September. But the UN food agency said Tuesday that dispatching food inside the country has been increasingly hampered by growing insecurity. It said truck drivers were reluctant to drive on some roads and to deliver food assistance to certain risky areas.
The worsening humanitarian situation in Syria has been exacerbated by the overall economic decline in the country since the conflict began nearly three years ago. The country's gross domestic product (GDP) contracted nearly 30 percent since the uprising began in early 2011, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) reported Tuesday.
Syria has been witnessing fierce fighting between government forces and armed rebels opposed to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad since March 2011. An estimated 60,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Syria since the armed rebellion began.
In addition to the millions trapped inside Syria, the conflict has forced hundreds of thousands of Syrians to seek refuge in neighboring Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. The conflict is threatening to spill over to neighboring nations and increasingly becoming sectarian in nature.
The international community has committed more than $1.5 billion for humanitarian aid to Syrians affected by the conflict, both inside and outside the country. Supporting reconstruction of critical infrastructure such as water pumping stations and providing essential relief supplies like medicines, are among the top four priorities inside the country, along with helping people who have fled their homes and the communities hosting them and helping the poorest avoid total destitution.
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Market Analysis
April 17, 2026 15:29 ET The ongoing conflict in the Middle East continues to raise concerns for policymakers who worry about the impact of the supply shock and high energy prices on the real economy. Producer price data and various survey results on the housing market were the main news from the U.S. this week. In Europe, industrial production data for the euro area gained attention. GDP figures out of China and the policy move by the Singapore central bank were in focus in Asia.