Newborn dies in blockaded Syrian camp bordering Jordan

A baby in a Syrian refugee camp near the Jordanian border died as a result of a lack of health care.  

"The baby died in the al-Rukban camp shortly after the mother gave birth due to a lack of medical care in the camp, mainly inhabited by those displaced from Palmyra and east Syria," Khaled al-Homsi, media activist, told The New Arab.

The mother’s health is still critical due to the absence of many drugs and medicine from the camp’s medical centre which handles thousands of civilians.  

The Jordanian government demanded that the camp be evacuated after the Jordanian army met delegates from the camp. They did not specify the destination of thousands of families.

Jordan declared the area around the Rukban border crossing a "closed military zone" in June, after a suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State group killed seven soldiers near a makeshift desert camp where more than 100,000 Syrians are stuck.

Last month Amnesty International released images showing the effects of the humanitarian crisis growing at the Rukban border crossing between Syria and Jordan.

The human rights NGO released new images clearly showing a graveyard near Rukban, providing a new insight into the terrible conditions of the makeshift refugee camp.

According to Amnesty, the number of shelters at Rukban has increased from 368 in 2015 to more 8,295 in September 2016.

It is not currently possible to reliably count the number of deaths at the camp, due to the lack of access for aid workers.

Medical aid charity, Doctors Without Borders, has previously described the situation at the camp as a "massive failure of the international community".

According to official UN statistics as of July 2016, Jordan currently hosts 657,422 Syrian refugees, however the total is closer to 1.4 million.