Скачать или смотреть UNRWA commisioner general visits Palestinian refugee camp

(25 Feb 2014) The chief of the United Nations relief agency supporting Palestinian refugees made a rare visit on Monday to the besieged Palestinian camp of Yarmouk in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) shipments to Yarmouk were cut for months, leaving residents to suffer from crippling shortages of food and medicine.
Small shipments resumed last month (January 2014), although they remain intermittent.
More than 100 people have died in in the area since mid-2013 as a result of starvation and illnesses exacerbated by hunger or lack of medical aid, according to UN figures.
Palestinian aid officials say gunmen inside the camp have hampered relief efforts.
"We need this camp to be demilitarised completely from all armed groups so that we can distribute assistance to everybody in need," Grandi said as he toured parts of the camp.
Grandi said around 18,000 of the camp's original 160,000 Palestinian refugees were still inside Yarmouk.
According to Syria's state news agency, SANA, Palestinian aid officials said over 3000 people had been evacuated from the camp in recent months.
But some of those living there said there were no armed gangs left and they didn't want to leave their homes.
Yarmouk, located in southern Damascus, is the largest of nine Palestinian camps in Syria.
Since the camp's creation in 1957, it has evolved into a densely populated residential district just five miles (eight kilometres) from the centre of Damascus.
Several generations of Palestinian refugees have lived there.
On Tuesday, Grandi spoke about his visit to the camp from the Lebanese capital of Beirut.
He said the extent of damage to the refugees' homes in Yarmouk was shocking and that the state of those still in the camp was even more so.
"It's like the appearance of ghosts," he said of the people coming from within Yarmouk near a distribution point he was allowed to reach.
"The devastation is unbelievable. There is not one single building that I have seen that is not an empty shell by now," he said.
Grandi welcomed last week's UN Security Council resolution calling for immediate access for humanitarian aid to all areas of Syria.
He said the resolution, unanimously adopted by the Security Council, "gives us a tool to argue in favour of access that is stronger than any other tool we've ever had before in Syria."


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