(MENAFN- Gulf Times) A UN aid group warned on Saturday that the
humanitarian situation is "quite dire" at a desert refugee camp in
Syria where thousands of people are stranded.
"The humanitarian situation at Rukban is quiet dire. It's pure desert
here, barely nothing grows," said Marwa Awad, a spokeswoman for the
World Food Programme (WFP) in Syria.
"This is one of the worst humanitarian situations I've seen," she
told dpa.
On Wednesday, the United Nations in collaboration with the Syrian Red Crescent dispatched its largest aid convoy in war-devastated war to
thousands of refugees at the Rukban camp near the border with
Jordan.
"We don't have access, you can't go and bring aid and get back to
them," Awad said.
"We've doubled assistance because we don't know when we can come
back," she added.
The camp is located in southern Syria, 265 kilometres away from the
capital Damascus, and is home to around 40,000 displaced Syrians.
Most of the refugees in Rukban fled areas in eastern Syria that had
fallen to the Islamic State extremist group and were trapped after
Jordanian authorities closed the border.
In June 2017, Jordan declared the Rukban area a military zone after
an attack claimed by Islamic State targeted a nearby border post,
killing six soldiers.
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