AN appeal has been launched by one of Scotland's leading international aid agencies to help Syrians fleeing the country amid the civil war.
The Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (Sciaf) is calling on Scots to help thousands of Syrian refugees flooding into neighbouring Jordan.
The Syrian civil war has so far seen 60,000 killed and an estimated 1.5 million people leave their homes as violence increases.
Basic needs such as food, clean water and safe shelter are difficult to obtain and the United Nations estimates four million people are in need of humanitarian assistance because of the conflict.
Sciaf, the official international aid and development agency of the Catholic Church in Scotland, will be working through sister agencies in the region, such as Caritas Jordan, to provide emergency aid to refugees, the majority of whom are women and children.
With Sciaf's support Caritas Jordan will provide help to 25,500 people in Amman, Irbid, Zarqa, Madaba and Mafraq.
Patricia Chale, Sciaf's director, said: "I am appealing to all Sciaf supporters and the wider Scottish public to please give whatever they can today to help the people devastated by this war who now find themselves homeless refugees in desperate need."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article