ANSD : Syria approves U.N. aid delivery to Rukban camp

SAT 20 - 4 - 2024

Date: Oct 18, 2018
Source: The Daily Star

Syria approves U.N. aid delivery to Rukban camp

AMMAN: The Syrian government has given approval for the U.N. to deliver aid next week to thousands of civilians stranded on the Jordanian-Syrian border and threatened with starvation, aid workers and camp officials said Wednesday. A siege this month by the Syrian army and a block on aid by Jordan has depleted food at the camp in the Rukban area of southeast Syria.

That has led to at least a dozen deaths in the past week among its more than 50,000 inhabitants, mainly women and children, residents and U.N. sources told Reuters.

Rukban lies inside a “deconfliction zone” set up by U.S. forces.

Damascus says U.S. troops are occupying Syrian territory and providing a safe haven for rebels.

U.N. officials have contacted local staff in the camp to say they have received authorization from Damascus to send an aid convoy on Oct. 25.

“The U.N. told us they would bring in aid ... they have promised many times in the past but every time they say we were not able to come because the [Syrian] regime did not allow us,” said Oqba al-Abdullah, a relief official in the camp. “We hope this time it’s true.”

The U.N. children’s agency UNICEF warned last week that without aid the lives of thousands of children in the camp were at risk.

U.N. officials have been pressing Moscow to get its ally Damascus to agree to the aid shipment, a senior U.N. source involved in the operation told Reuters.

In the last three years, tens of thousands of people have fled to the camp from Daesh (ISIS)-held parts of Syria being targeted by Russian and U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.

The Syrian army has tightened its siege of the camp, which is also near the Iraqi border, preventing smugglers and traders from delivering food. Jordan agreed early this year to allow a one-off aid shipment but has said since that it should not be held responsible as the camp is not on its territory and all future provisions must come from U.N. stores inside Syria.

The “deconfliction zone” is designed to shield U.S. troops at Al-Tanf garrison and maintain for Washington a strategic foothold in an area close to a crucial supply route for Iranian weapons entering Syria from Iraq. U.S.-led coalition warplanes have several times struck Iranian-backed militias allied to Damascus, in what Washington has described as self-defense.

Senior Western diplomatic sources believe the siege of the camp is part of a Russian-led effort to put pressure on Washington to get out of Al-Tanf.

Meanwhile, Jordan said a group of 279 Syrian rescue workers has left the kingdom for resettlement in Western countries, three months after they were evacuated from Israel.

The kingdom announced on July 22 it had received 422 White Helmet rescuers and their relatives after they were evacuated from Syria’s south ahead of advancing government troops.

The group had been ferried to Israel from its war-torn neighbor and foe Syria and then taken on to Jordan. They will now be resettled in Britain, Canada and Germany.

Founded in 2013, the Syria civil defense, or White Helmets, is a network of first responders who rescue wounded in the aftermath of airstrikes, shelling or blasts in rebel-held territory.

The Jordanian Foreign Ministry said that “279 Syrian employees of the Civil Defense left the kingdom” for resettlement.

“The government allowed them to pass through its territory temporarily for resettlement in Western countries,” the ministry said.

Britain, Germany and Canada made legally binding commitments to resettle them within a period of no longer than three months and without obligations to the kingdom.

Their passage was allowed “at the request of the United Nations for purely humanitarian reasons,” the ministry said.

It added that the number of those expected to be resettled had jumped to 428 after the birth of six children and that the remainder of the group was expected to travel over the next two weeks.

Famous for dramatic pictures of rescue workers pulling bloodied children from the scenes of government bombings, the White Helmets have received aid and training from Western countries but say that they are independent.

The group also receives funding from a number of governments, including Britain, Germany, Canada and the United States, and from individual donors.

But Damascus and its ally Moscow have accused the group of being terrorists in disguise and a “tool” in the hands of foreign governments that support them.

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