Huge crowd of Palestinians is photographed waiting for aid in Yarmouk, which has been under blockade for month
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Refugees queue for food parcels in Yarmouk. Photograph: Handout/Reuters
It is a vision of unimaginable desolation: a crowd of men, women and children stretching as far as the eye can see into the war-devastated landscape of Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus.
A photograph released on Wednesday by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, shows the scene when thousands of desperate Palestinians trapped inside the camp on the edge of the Syrian capital emerged to besiege aid workers attempting to distribute food parcels.
More than 18,000 people are existing under blockade inside Yarmouk, enduring acute shortages of food, medicines and other essentials. Much of the camp has been destroyed by shelling, and attempts to deliver aid to those inside have been hampered by continued fighting in Syria's three-year-old civil war.
United Nations workers have delivered about 7,000 food parcels over recent weeks, following negotiations between the Syrian government, rebel forces and Palestinian factions within the camp. The most recent delivery, of 450 parcels, was on Wednesday. The UN acknowledges that the level of aid is a "drop in the ocean".
Yarmouk has been cut off since last July. Many residents are now weak and severely malnourished, as well as being exposed to the risk of disease, or death and injury from fighting.
Filippo Grandi, the head of UNRWA, described the camp as a ghost town after visiting this week. "The devastation is unbelievable. There is not one single building that I have seen that is not an empty shell by now. They're all blackened by smoke," he told reporters.
He said he was even more shocked by the camp's residents, who flooded towards aid distribution points. "It's like the appearance of ghosts. These are people who have not been out of there, that have been trapped in there not only without food, medicines, clean water – all the basics – but also probably completely subjected to fear because there was fierce fighting … They can hardly speak. I tried to speak to many of them, and they all tell the same stories of complete deprivation."
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UN chief ‘deeply disturbed’ by refugee camp in Syria
The chief of the UN relief agency supporting Palestinian refugees said he is “deeply disturbed and shaken” by the despair and destruction he had seen in a besieged camp in the Syrian capital.
By Albert Aji, Syria
The
Yarmouk refugee camp, located in southern Damascus, is an opposition
enclave under the tight blockade of forces loyal to President Bashar
Assad. More than 100 people have died in Yarmouk since mid-2013 as a result of starvation and illnesses exacerbated by hunger or lack of medical aid, according to UN figures.
Filippo Grandi, commissioner general of UNRWA, was visiting Yarmouk as the relief agency resumed food distribution there. Shipments to the camp have been disrupted for months, sometimes cut off for weeks at a time, and Yarmouk has suffered from crippling shortages of food and medicine.
“I am deeply disturbed and shaken by what I observed,” Grandi said. Palestinian refugees to whom he spoke in Yarmouk were “traumatised by what they have lived through.”
The extent of damage to the refugees’ homes was shocking, he also said, adding that many Palestinians in Yarmouk need immediate support, particularly food and medical treatment.
Yarmouk is the largest of nine Palestinian camps in Syria. Since the camp’s creation in 1957, it has evolved into a densely populated residential district just five miles from the centre of Damascus. Several generations of Palestinian refugees have lived there.
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Palestinians in Syrian camp are ‘traumatized’
More than 100 people have died in Yarmouk since mid-2013, some of starvation
- ap
- Published: 16:25 February 25, 2014
Damascus: The chief of the United
Nations relief agency supporting Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday he
is “deeply disturbed and shaken” by the despair and destruction he’d
seen in a besieged camp in the Syrian capital.
The Yarmouk refugee camp,
located in southern Damascus, is an opposition enclave under the tight
blockade of forces loyal to President Bashar Al Assad. More than 100
people have died in Yarmouk since mid-2013 as a result of starvation and
illnesses exacerbated by hunger or lack of medical aid, according to UN
figures.
Filippo Grandi, the
Commissioner General of UNRWA, was visiting Yarmouk as the relief agency
resumed food distribution there. UNRWA shipments to the camp have been
disrupted for months, sometimes cut off for weeks at a time, and Yarmouk
has suffered from crippling shortages of food and medicine.
“I am deeply disturbed and
shaken by what I observed,” Grandi said in a statement. Palestinian
refugees to whom he spoke in Yarmouk Monday were “traumatized by what
they have lived through.”
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