Fire Hits Iraq-Syria Border Refugee Camp

A large fire recently hit the Al Tanf refugee camp on the Iraq-Syria border, injuring many refugees and burning fifty-three tents. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has provided assistance to the camp to help its inhabitants recover from this.

According to a press release issued by the United Nations on Tuesday, the fire was started by a stove and injured 25 Palestinian refugees living at the camp. The fire spread quickly through the refugee camp. In addition to tents, it destroyed personal documents and other possessions of the refugees. Three-hundred and ten Palestinian refugees live at the camp; they escaped violence in Iraq (where they previously resided) but have been unable to gain entry to other countries bordering Iraq, which have already taken in a large number of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees. They have been living at the Al Tanf camp for about one and a half years. Another camp, which has about fourteen-hundred refugees, is located in the same area.

The UNHCR agency has provided a significant amount of aid material to help repair the camp and avoid additional fire damage. They quickly provided new tents, kitchen supplies, and mattresses, as well as refilling fire extinguishers and looking into additional measures for the prevention of fires. A spokeswoman for the UNHCR was quoted as saying that the fire "added to an increasing atmosphere of despair and desperation at the camp."

The CIA World Factbook page on Syria indicates that there are about 435 thousand Palestinian refugees and 700,000-1,200,000 Iraqi refugees living in that country. It also indicates that the unemployment rate is just over twelve percent, possibly revealing part of the reason for Syria's increasing unwillingness to accept additional refugees. There are approximately three-hundred thousand internally-displaced people in Syria as well, most of them having fled the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights during the Arab-Israeli War in 1967.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), there are more than 4.4 million Palestinian refugees registered in the Middle East region. This includes approximately 274 thousand families living in refugee camps. Fifty-eight refugee camps for Palestinians exist in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, with the largest number of registered refugees in Jordan. The refugee population has increased since 1950, when there were about 914 thousand, to 2.1 million in 1985, and over twice as many at present. About 30% of the refugees live in camps.

Source:

1. United Nations, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=24232
2. CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sy.html
3. UNRWA, http://www.un.org/unrwa/publications/index.html