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Displaced residents of Yarmouk camp receive Syrian government aid

Thursday, 19 May 2016 6:00 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 19 May 2016 6:00 PM ]

Palestinians and Syrians collect food aid parcels in Yarmouk, southern Damascus, Syria, May 12, 2016. ©AFP

With the cooperation of the Syrian government, humanitarian aid has been distributed among residents of the Yarmouk refugee camp who have left the center due to foreign-sponsored militancy gripping the Arab country.

In a statement sent to Syria’s official SANA news agency on Thursday, Ali Mustafa, the head of the General Authority for Palestinian Arab Refugees (GAPAR), said 2,400 food and health packages were delivered to the families of the Yarmouk camp who are currently residing in Damascus countryside.

The operation sponsored by the Syrian government and supervised by the Higher Relief Committee was conducted by the GAPAR, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and Damascus as well as Damascus countryside governorates.

Patients also received medical services and medicines during the operation.

Since January 2014, some 136,982 food packages and 42,580 health baskets have been distributed among Yarmouk residents.

The Yarmouk camp, a 2.11-square-kilometer district of the Syrian capital city of Damascus, was home to an estimated 160,000 Syrians and Palestinians before the crisis began in the Middle Eastern state in 2011.

Now, the majority of Yarmouk’s population has fled to other Syrian towns and cities, with some making their way abroad.

‘UN to airdrop aid in Syria if needed’

In another relevant development on Thursday, United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura announced that the world body will take the “last resort” option of “dangerous” and “expensive” airdrops of aid if access to besieged Syrian areas is not improved by June 1.

United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura speaks during a press conference in Vienna, Austria, May 17, 2016. ©AFP

“We want to bring aid to everyone. If the food cannot be brought by convoys, the alternative is air drops,” de Mistura told reporters in the Swiss city of Geneva.

He further noted that the credibility of the next round of negotiations between Syria’s warring sides would be in question without better aid access and some restoration of the country’s shaky ceasefire.

The cessation of hostilities, brokered by Moscow and Washington, was introduced in Syria in February in a bid to facilitate dialogue between rival parties in the war-torn country. However, renewed violence in some parts of Syria has left the truce in tatters in recent weeks and torpedoed the peace talks.

Some 1.1 million people live under siege in violence-wracked Syria, according to the Siege Watch monitoring organization.

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