14th April, 2015
UN officials have continued to express their alarm over the plight of 18,000 Palestinian and Syrian refugees trapped in the Yarmouk refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus, calling on armed groups who have been involved in intense fighting in the camp for the past couple of weeks to "respect the beleaguered civilians" trapped inside the camp.
During a visit to Damascus, Pierre Krähenbühl, commissioner-general for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA) said there remained an urgent need to provide humanitarian assistance inside the camp. More than 3,500 children are among those trapped there.
"The Syria conflict has a human face," he said. "These are individuals with a dignity and destiny that must be at the centre of our responses as we grapple with the complexities of protecting civilians, in Yarmouk and beyond."
His comments follow those of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who last week said described the Yarmouk refugee camp as "the deepest circle of hell". “A refugee camp is beginning to resemble a death camp. The residents of Yarmouk – including 3,500 children – are being turned into human shields.”
While the UN has been making intermittent distributions of food and water inside the camp for more than a year, the fighting has interrupted humanitarian operations and meant some people have now been without aid for months.
Mr Krähenbühl has said meetings with Syrian Government officials over the weekend had given him "some grounds for optimism" but added that much more work still needs to be done.
– DAVID ADAMS
