Source:Xinhua Published: 2014-1-19 8:58:40
A first batch of relief aid has entered a main camp of the Palestinian refugees in Syria on Saturday, after several unsuccessful attempts to deliver food aid to the trapped people inside the besieged camp in Damascus.
Spokesman of the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, Anwar Raja, told the official SANA news agency that the first batch of food supplies have entered al-Yarmouk camp in the capital Damascus as part of a popular initiative to alleviate the suffering of the people trapped in the camp.
Raja pointed out that delivering the humanitarian aid was carried out through "primitive and complicated ways" as the efforts of the Palestinian popular committee and families of the camp united to deliver the aid, adding that the Syrian government offered all logistic and security facilitations to deliver this batch of humanitarian aid.
The Syrian forces have besieged for months al-Yarmouk camp, the main residential area for Palestinian refugees in Syria, blocking its food and medical supplies in a bid to force the rebels out.
People in the camp found themselves caught in the middle of the fighting and victimized by the violence. They urged the Jihadist groups to leave their camp in order for the government troops to break the siege and allow relief aid in.
The Syrian officials accused the rebels inside the camp of hindering efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to the afflicted people inside that area.
Khaled Abdul-Majid of the Damascus-based Palestinian Popular Struggle Front told Xinhua that a total of 30 Palestinians died in the past three months as a result of hunger and illness at the camp.
He added that around 20,000 Palestinians and 10,000 Syrians are currently trapped inside the hard-battered camp.
Since violence started creeping toward the camp in early 2013, many of its residents, both Syrians and Palestinians, have fled their homes.
Some Damascus-based Palestinian factions put forward many initiatives recently that aim to disassociate the camp from the Syrian conflict, but they were all rendered flat.
Syria's 500,000 Palestinian refugees have tried to keep a distance from the violence that took place in nearby areas, but Syria's civil conflict did not spare them.