7,000 Persons Quit Rukban Camp Near Jordan Border

More than 7,000 people have left the Rukban camp for displaced Syrians near the Jordanian border since March, a United Nations spokesperson said on Friday.

According to the UN, around 36,000 people remained in the isolated Rukban camp near an al-Tanf base used by the US-led coalition.

People in the camp have been living under difficult humanitarian conditions since 2016.

Damascus has said in February it had opened corridors out of the camp, calling on residents to leave.

“Since March, over 7,300 people have left Rukban,” OCHA spokesman David Swanson told AFP, including some 3,000 who left after April 21.

Those who have quit the camp have moved to collective shelters in the central city of Homs or resettled in their areas of origin in the province of the same name, according to OCHA.

It said Rukban residents were organizing their own transportation to the edge of a de-escalation zone established around Al Tanf, from where they either continued in their vehicles or were transferred by private or government-provided vehicles to four collective shelters in Homs city.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says those returning to government-held parts of Homs from Rukban had struck so-called “reconciliation deals” with the regime forces.

Source: 7,000 Persons Quit Rukban Camp Near Jordan Border | Asharq AL-awsat