Aid convoy delay leaves refugees at Syria-Jordan border destitute

A statement from the camp said they had been preparing to receive the convoy on Saturday when the UN notified them the convoy had been delayed, without specifying a new date for the dispatch.

Many of the camp’s estimated 50,000 residents - most of them women and children - are in dire straits after a sand storm battered the camp over the past two days, in addition to it being put under Syrian regime blockade which has depleted its food and water stocks.

“The UN have coordinated very well with us but the delay could well be due to the weather conditions and the sandstorms, anyway the reason for the delay will become clearer in the next day or two,” Oqba al Abdullah, an official inside the camp told Reuters.

Others were more sceptical, with one camp official telling The New Arab’s Arabic service said he refused to believe the basis for the “safety concerns” cited for the delay, adding that the UN is under pressure from the Syrian regime, which seeks to obstruct aid delivery to the camp’s residents in order to increase pressure on them.

A UN relief officer said last week that the Syrian regime government had agreed to a UN request to deliver humanitarian aid in the coming week to the refugees trapped in the 50,000-person Rukban camp.

“The planned joint UN-Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) humanitarian convoy to Rukban camp has been delayed for logistical and security reasons,” Fadwa Abed Rabou Baroud, a Damascus-based UN representative, told Reuters on Friday.

“The UN remains ready to deliver aid for the 50,000 people in need as soon as conditions allow,” she added.

The Rukban camp is located inside a “deconfliction zone” set up by the US-led international coalition in 2016 around its military base in Tanf, near to where the Syrian, Jordanian and Iraqi borders meet.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have flocked to the makeshift camp over the past three years fleeing from the Islamic State group, as well as the devastating airstrike campaigns against the former militant strongholds.

The cross-border location was seen as a strategic foothold for Washington while it launched offensive against the Islamic State, as well as being close to the Iranian weapons supply route entering Syria from Iraq.

However the desert camp has become even more isolated since Jordan sealed its border with Syria in 2016, after an Islamic State group militant attack on Jordanian border guards left seven officers dead, leaving refugees stranded on the frontier.

Over the past two days the area has been pummelled by a sand storm which caused tents to be blown away. Dozens of the camp’s residents suffered breathing problems from the dust storms as well as being affected by flooding from the heavy rain that followed.