A CANDLELIT vigil was held in Oxford to mark three years since fighting began in Syria and to call world leaders into action.

Oxfam organised the vigil outside the Radcliffe Camera, in Radcliffe Square, as part of more than 40 others worldwide aimed at pressuring governments to help ensure the conflict is brought to an end.

About 50 Oxfam staff and members of the public attended the vigil at 6pm on Thursday.

Organiser Adeline Guerra, a humanitarian campaigner based at Oxfam’s office in Summertown, said 120 organisations had been involved in the campaign to call for an end to the fighting.

She said: “The rationale behind it is we are entering the fourth year of the confilct and there has been some diplomatic movement but no real progress to date to stop the loss of life and people fleeing the conflict.

“We cannot afford to witness another year of such dreadful conflict.”

Similar vigils were held in places including Mexico City and Darfur and the hashtag #WithSyria was used to unite all the events. Some 25,000 tweets used the hashtag on Twitter over 18 hours.

Miss Guerra added: “The idea is to make a lot of noise and then go to leaders and say you cannot ignore our message.”

For more information, visit with-syria.org