Syria Approves Aid Delivery to Remote Camp on Jordan Border
AMMAN (Dispatches) – The Syrian government gave approval for the UN to deliver aid next week to thousands of civilians stranded near a U.S. garrison on the Jordanian-Syrian border, aid workers and camp officials said on Wednesday.
A siege earlier this month by the Syrian army and a block on aid by Jordan has depleted food at the camp in the southeastern Syrian area of Rukban. This led to at least a dozen deaths in the past week among its over 50,000 inhabitants, mainly women and children, residents and UN sources told Reuters.
The United Nations contacted local officials in the camp to say they had received authorization from Damascus to send an aid convoy on Oct. 25.
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, which agreed early this year to allow a one-off aid shipment, has said since it should not be held responsible as the camp was not on its territory and all future provisions must come from UN stores inside Syria.
In the last three years, tens of thousands of people have fled to the camp from Daesh-held parts of Syria that were being targeted by Russian and U.S.-led coalition air strikes.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin says a deal brokered by Russia and Turkey, which aims to create a demilitarized zone in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib and has so far held off a government offensive on the last major terrorist stronghold in the country, was going ahead, despite foreign-sponsored militants failing to leave the zone the day before.
"According to the information we are receiving from our military, the memorandum is being implemented and the military are satisfied with the way the Turkish side is working,” Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
"Of course one cannot expect everything to go smoothly with absolutely no glitches, but the work is being carried out,” he added.
Under a deal reached following a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi on September 17, all militants in the demilitarized zone, which surrounds Idlib and also parts of the adjacent provinces of Aleppo and Hama, must pull out heavy arms, and terrorist groups must withdraw by October 15.
A siege earlier this month by the Syrian army and a block on aid by Jordan has depleted food at the camp in the southeastern Syrian area of Rukban. This led to at least a dozen deaths in the past week among its over 50,000 inhabitants, mainly women and children, residents and UN sources told Reuters.
The United Nations contacted local officials in the camp to say they had received authorization from Damascus to send an aid convoy on Oct. 25.
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, which agreed early this year to allow a one-off aid shipment, has said since it should not be held responsible as the camp was not on its territory and all future provisions must come from UN stores inside Syria.
In the last three years, tens of thousands of people have fled to the camp from Daesh-held parts of Syria that were being targeted by Russian and U.S.-led coalition air strikes.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin says a deal brokered by Russia and Turkey, which aims to create a demilitarized zone in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib and has so far held off a government offensive on the last major terrorist stronghold in the country, was going ahead, despite foreign-sponsored militants failing to leave the zone the day before.
"According to the information we are receiving from our military, the memorandum is being implemented and the military are satisfied with the way the Turkish side is working,” Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
"Of course one cannot expect everything to go smoothly with absolutely no glitches, but the work is being carried out,” he added.
Under a deal reached following a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi on September 17, all militants in the demilitarized zone, which surrounds Idlib and also parts of the adjacent provinces of Aleppo and Hama, must pull out heavy arms, and terrorist groups must withdraw by October 15.