Baby dies at besieged Syrian Rukban camp due to lack of medical care

A two-month-old baby died on Friday at the besieged Rukban camp in the Syrian desert, on the border with Jordan and Iraq, as a result of a lack of medical care.

The camp has been besieged by Syrian regime forces since 2018, with both Syrian and Jordanian authorities refusing to allow the supply of aid.

It is currently inhabited by 10,000 displaced civilians. Medical supplies in the camp have run out, and the only medical staff in the camp are nurses and trainees, who are not qualified to make diagnoses.

The baby died as a result of a high fever, with medical staff unable to bring it down, Maher Al-Ali, the head of the Tribal Council of the Syrian Desert, told The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

Mohammed al-Shehab, one of the camp residents, told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the child was from Palmyra, and had developmental problems as a result of a lack of formula milk, with breastfeeding not enough because his mother was malnourished.

This, al-Shehab said, had been one of the reasons he died of the fever.

While suffering a crippling siege, the camp has been neglected by humanitarian organisations. It has relied largely on smugglers to provide it with essential supplies, but three months ago regime forces tightened their siege.

The US maintains a military presence at the Tanf base nearby and last month, Amnesty International called on it to “urgently” provide aid to the camp.

"The already dire humanitarian situation at the camp has deteriorated sharply in recent months after the Syrian government tightened the siege it has imposed on the territory around the camp since 2015, setting up checkpoints that have blocked informal smuggling routes that the camp’s residents relied on for essential supplies," Amnesty said.

The Syrian regime forces besieging the camp are from the notorious Fourth Division, which is headed by President Bashar al-Assad’s brother, Maher.

Al-Ali said that two days ago cars had tried to leave the camp, heading to the regime lines in order to bring food, but one driver was shot, injured, and detained by the regime, while another was taken to hospital in Al-Hasakah by US forces after being wounded.

The camp previously had a population of around 60,000 but most of the residents fled after the siege began in 2018.

Many of those who returned to regime-held areas from the camp were detained, disappeared, or turned up dead, and those remaining are terrified of returning to their cities and towns of origin.