An intense information war being waged alongside armed hostilities in Syria is affecting efforts to help victims of the conflict, a senior humanitarian official says.

Pawel Krzysiek, the spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Syria, says there is an atmosphere of "information chaos" as adversaries spread misinformation to discredit one another using social media and other digital channels.

"This war is being conducted very heavily in cyberspace – the regular armed groups also have cyber armies," he said. "There are multiple sources pushing their own agendas."

Krzysiek, an Arab-speaker who has been based in Syria since 2015, said Syria's cyber-combatants regularly "hack each other" and constantly "troll the news" in a bid to counter information disseminated by their opponents.