Damascus Airport to Start Operating International Flights from Jan 7

General Security personnel stand next to a Syrian Air airplane ahead of take-off as the airport reopens for internal flights in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
General Security personnel stand next to a Syrian Air airplane ahead of take-off as the airport reopens for internal flights in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
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Damascus Airport to Start Operating International Flights from Jan 7

General Security personnel stand next to a Syrian Air airplane ahead of take-off as the airport reopens for internal flights in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
General Security personnel stand next to a Syrian Air airplane ahead of take-off as the airport reopens for internal flights in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)

Syria's Damascus airport will start operating international flights from Jan. 7, Syrian Civil Aviation Authority chief Ashad Al Saliby told Syrian state news agency Sana on Saturday.

The first flight since the ouster of Syria’s president Bashar Assad took off on Dec. 18 from Damascus airport to Aleppo in the country’s north.
Thirty-two people including journalists were on board the plane.

Assad fled Syria as a lightning opposition offensive wrested from his control city after city.



More Than 4 Million Refugees Have Fled Sudan Civil War, UN Says 

Displaced people ride a an animal-drawn cart, following Rapid Support Forces (RSF) attacks on the Zamzam displacement camp, in the town of Tawila, North Darfur, Sudan April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
Displaced people ride a an animal-drawn cart, following Rapid Support Forces (RSF) attacks on the Zamzam displacement camp, in the town of Tawila, North Darfur, Sudan April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
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More Than 4 Million Refugees Have Fled Sudan Civil War, UN Says 

Displaced people ride a an animal-drawn cart, following Rapid Support Forces (RSF) attacks on the Zamzam displacement camp, in the town of Tawila, North Darfur, Sudan April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
Displaced people ride a an animal-drawn cart, following Rapid Support Forces (RSF) attacks on the Zamzam displacement camp, in the town of Tawila, North Darfur, Sudan April 15, 2025. (Reuters)

The number of people who have fled Sudan since the beginning of its civil war in 2023 has surpassed four million, UN refugee agency officials said on Tuesday, adding that many survivors faced inadequate shelter due to funding shortages.

"Now in its third year, the 4 million people is a devastating milestone in what is the world's most damaging displacement crisis at the moment," UN refugee agency spokesperson Eujin Byun told a Geneva press briefing.

"If the conflict continues in Sudan, thousands more people, we expect thousands more people will continue to flee, putting regional and global stability at stake," she said.

Sudan, which erupted in violence in April 2023, shares borders with seven countries: Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Central African Republic and Libya.

More than 800,000 of the refugees have arrived in Chad, where their shelter conditions are dire due to funding shortages, with only 14% of funding appeals met, UNHCR's Dossou Patrice Ahouansou told the same briefing.

"This is an unprecedented crisis that we are facing. This is a crisis of humanity. This is a crisis of ... protection based on the violence that refugees are reporting," he said.

Many of those fleeing reported surviving terror and violence, he added, describing meeting a seven-year-old girl in Chad who was hurt in an attack on her home in Sudan's Zamzam displacement camp that killed her father and two brothers and had to have her leg amputated during her escape. Her mother had been killed in an earlier attack, he said.

Other refugees told stories of armed groups taking their horses and donkeys and forcing adults to draw their own family members by cart as they fled, he said.