U.N.: Syria Is Worst Crisis Since Rwanda

The United Nations said Tuesday that the Syrian civil war has created a refugee crisis not seen since the Rwandan genocide of 1994. “The extremely high rate of killing nowadays—approximately 5,000 a month—demonstrates the drastic deterioration of the conflict,” Ivan Simonovic, the assistant secretary for Human Rights, told the Security Council. Nearly two thirds of the 1.8 million refugees registered in Syria’s neighboring countries had fled Syria since the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, the U.N. envoy to Iraq, Martin Kobler, said that the “battlefields are merging” with Iraq, where the violence is spilling over into Syria. The last four months have been the bloodiest in five years in Iraq, with nearly 3,000 killed and 7,000 injured.