Syria refugee camp gets aid after 10 months

DAMASCUS, Syria — U.N. officials and volunteers from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent offered children vaccinations and distributed desperately needed aid on Sunday, the first such assistance since January to reach thousands in a remote camp for the displaced on Syria’s border with Jordan.

Residents said that teams from international organizations entered their desolate camp for the first time since it was set up over three years ago, where nearly 50,000 have been stranded in limbo.

Fadwa Baroud of the United Nations Office of the Resident Coordinator said it was the first time a U.N. aid convoy had accessed Rukban camp from inside Syria. She said aid workers were in the Rukban area.

Before January, aid only reached the camp from Jordan and aid workers were barred from accessing the camp because of security concerns.

The Arab Syrian Red Crescent and the United Nations posted pictures of staff members unloading trucks of life-saving assistance and administering vaccines to children.

Residents posed with the aid trucks driving through the camp, where 10,000 children are expected to be vaccinated.

The U.S.-led coalition fighting against Islamic State militants said its local allies, a Syrian armed group known as Maghawir al-Thawra, provided security for the aid convoys.

Resident Abdul-Fatah alKhaled, who also runs a camp school, said aid workers, including U.N. staff, were on the ground at the camp for the first time.

“Before [January] the aid used to be distributed from the Jordanian side over the sand berms” or by rebel groups who resided in the camp, al-Khaled said.

Al-Khaled said distribution of food and winter clothes began late Saturday.

People started gathering in Rukban three years ago, fleeing Islamic State militants and airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition, Russia and Syria. Jordan sealed its border and stopped regular aid deliveries in 2016 after a cross-border Islamic State attack that killed seven Jordanian soldiers. The attack, and other violence, fueled accusations that militants were hiding among camp residents and raised concern that deteriorating humanitarian conditions amounted to collective punishment.

The last aid delivery from Jordan was in January, leaving the camp’s residents dependent on goods largely smuggled from government-held areas. The situation sharply deteriorated when the Syrian government blocked supply routes last month after a botched reconciliation deal with rebel groups in the area.

Russia, a close ally of the Syrian government, has blamed the U.S. for the deterioration of the situation in Rukban, which is within a 20-square-mile “deconfliction zone” set up by U.S. forces stationed in the nearby Tanf military base.

The U.S.-led coalition has denied such allegations and blamed Russia and the Syrian government instead.

“We continue to stand ready to enable future delivery of U.N. humanitarian relief to the people of Rukban until they are able to return home as we pursue our mission of an enduring defeat of [the Islamic State],” said British Maj. Gen. Christopher Ghika, a deputy commander for the U.S.-led Coalition.

The U.N. said aid deliveries would continue for up to four days, describing the condition in the camp as “critical” with reported shortages of basic commodities, protection concerns and increasing violence.

At least four people have died in the past month from malnutrition and lack of medical care as regional powers traded blame.

Also on Sunday, the U.S.-led coalition conducted joint patrols with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces along the borders with Turkey, the second this week amid increased tension after Turkish artillery shelled Kurdish positions in northeast Syria.

“Sunday’s joint patrol with the SDF is the second of the week, after the first one was conducted by US forces on Friday,” Col. Sean Ryan, the coalition spokesman, told The Associated Press in an email. “The US forces’ assurance patrols enables us to maintain safety and security in the region, but are not carried out on a routine basis.”

Senior Kurdish official Ilham Ahmed said the patrols were conducted along the borders with Turkey in Ras al-Ayn, Tal Abiyad and Manbij.

In recent tension, Turkey said its military shelled Kurdish positions across the border in Syria, east of the Euphrates River, at least twice last week.

Turkey considers the Kurdish militia that forms the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces a terror threat and an extension of Kurdish rebels waging an insurgency within Turkey. U.S. support for the Kurdish-led forces has resulted in increased tension between Washington and Ankara.

Separately on Sunday, the Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told the pro-government daily AlWatan that Syria would cooperate with the new U.N. envoy Geir Pederson if he avoids the “methods” of his predecessor, commits to the country’s territorial integrity and stops supporting “terrorists, as his predecessor did.”

Pedersen succeeds Staffan de Mistura, who steps down this month after four years of unsuccessful peace efforts.