Syrian President Assad dared to take 'snow bucket challenge' for civil war refugees

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has been dared to take part in a 'snow bucket challenge' to raise awareness of Syrian refugees living in freezing camps as the country enters a fourth year of civil war.

Newsweek reports that Ehab Yousef, a young Syrian actor, posted a video of himself getting covered in buckets of snow for two minutes - a nod to last summer's Ice Bucket Challenge online phenomenon that raised over £6.8 million in the UK alone for motor-neurone disease charities.

In the video he urges President Assad to go outside into the snow or spend a night in a refugee camp with his family to experience the freezing conditions many of his countrymen are forced to endure because of the ongoing violence.

“Think of us when you’re warm,” Yousef said to Assad in the video.

Yousef also called for support and donations for those suffering the severe snowstorms every day, as he shivered with cold.

"I urge all the people around the world to donate whatever they can - money, medicine, blankets - to help the desperate refugees in the camps”, he said.

Millions of people displaced by the bloody civil war are experiencing freezing winds, rain, snowfall and plummeting temperatures in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey - the four countries with the highest numbers of registered Syrian refugees.

More than 3.2 million Syrians have fled the country and 7.6 million are internally displaced, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The United Nations has made a renewed and record-breaking global appeal to raise £5 billion for victims of the war in Syria, after falling well short of its last request for financial help.

The new appeal is the biggest ever humanitarian appeal for a single emergency.

Read: Winter is the season for survival for millions of Syrian refugees