Abrar Organization for Relief and Development started building stone-walled tents to receive a new wave of internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing their homes in the southern and eastern countryside of Idlib and protect them from the harsh cold winter.

On an area of six and a half hectares, capable of accommodating one thousand rooms, and with continuous work for two months, the organization has prepared a hundred rooms; each room is four meters long and 3.75 meters wide.

Served as Member Board of Directors, Wael al-Halabi indicated that the organization is going to complete setting up 200 additional stone-walled rooms within the second phase of the project over the coming months.

The project targeted people displaced by the recent military escalation in the southeastern countryside of Idlib, since mid-December 2019, especially from the city of Maraat al-Numan and its countryside.

Abrar Organization, according to its official website, is a non-profit charitable organization, founded in 2012. It provides people a collection of relief services and development projects. Abrar’s work is in emergency and disaster management, consisting of several institutions in the fields of primary health care, basic education, protection, and development as well as relief operations and food security.

The number of IDPs, between 1 November and 3 January, amounted to more than 55,000 persons and 600 families (around 329,000 people), according to the statistics of the Syrian Response Coordinators Group (SRCC).

On 3 January, the UN deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq, estimated that the majority of the displaced are children and women. The number of children exceeds 175,000, while the city of Maarat al-Numan and surrounding areas became “almost empty” of civilians, who headed north in search for safety.

The UN warned that “the humanitarian situation in Syria is deteriorating day by day,” owing to the ongoing violence and harsh weather conditions. Moreover, the sad facts that many IDPs have to sleep in the open, due to overcrowding in camps and lack of aid, in the rain and at a temperature of almost 0°C.