REFUGEE CAMP IN DAMASCUS CUT OFF FROM INTERNATIONAL AID BY AL NUSRA FRONT

In a horrific twist of fate, Palestinian and Syrian refugees in Yarmouk camp south of Damascus are slowly been left to die of starvation, even though in the distance a line of trucks carrying food and medicine is stalled behind a line controlled on one side by Syrian Army force and on the other side by the Al Nusra front, the extreme radical foreign group associated with Al Qaeda.

Already dozens of people have died, many of them children, and many more are near death. In the streets of Yarmouk camp people are seen dragging themselves among the rubble of ruins, slowly starving to death.

There are tens of thousands of refugees in the camp. The potential for further deaths is tremendous.   Aid convoys hopelessly wait behind enemy lines, with medicine and food that will never reach starving mothers and children.

 

Al Nusra front, which has usurped the civil revolt against the Assad regime from Syrian rebels in pursuit of the creation of a 'new' Ottoman Empire, is culpable of obstruction in this case.  

Although the siege was begun and is continued on one side by the Syrian government, at the moment the real culprit are radicalized foreign groups who are fighting for turf in the area.  An agreement signed by rebels groups to leave the refugee camp, which had infiltrated the camp earlier in the conflict, failed when four of them refused to comply, including Al Nusra and ISIS.  Their refusal to leave the area has created the fatal impasse that prohibits passage for any relief effort.  There is at the moment, no group or entity to which aid groups or agencies can appeal to remove the blockade.

If the foreign rebel groups left the area, the Syrian army, although reluctantly, would have to bow to international pressure to let the convoys pass.  But with the presence of rebel groups in and around the camp, the Syrian Army claims that denial of passage is done to ensure safety for those bringing relief.

It is a blame game with no victor and the potential for unlimited death.



Source: The Guardian/Chistian Science Monitor/  1.16.14