LONDON: UN officials warned on Wednesday of a potential “slaughter of innocents” unless aid reached a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria where thousands of civilians are trapped up in a vicious battle.
Some 18,000 civilians, including 3,500 children, are caught in the camp outside Damascus just a few miles from President Bashar Assad’s palace. The camp largely fell under Islamic State control last week and is surrounded by the Syrian army.
The Yarmouk camp has been held by anti-Assad insurgents and besieged by government troops since the early days of the war and many have already fled. But as fighting intensified in and around the camp, the remaining refugees have been left without food, water and medical supplies prompting aid agencies to call for evacuations.
“The level of inhumanity that Yarmouk has descended to is frankly unimaginable,” Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a Skype interview from Jerusalem.
“The situation is absolutely desperate. We need urgently to have humanitarian access, which is why UNRWA is calling for all parties to exercise influence with their clients on the ground so that we can get into the camp.”
Gunness said since the fighting escalated a week ago, UNRWA aid convoys have not been able to enter the camp and the already dire situation has become more desperate with people left without water, food or medicine and the growing risk of disease.
Gunness said a few Palestinian charities had managed to get some supplies to the camp but otherwise people were cut off with the risk of disease rising daily.
“When you have public health system completely shot to pieces, when you have such terrible levels of food insecurity ... disease is going to soar,” said Gunness.
“We have tragic pictures of children and others scooping up water out of holes in the streets.”
Gunness said UNRWA had not been a regular presence in the camp for at least two years so it was impossible to estimate the number of people now ill or the death toll.
The war in Syria has killed 220,000 people and displaced millions of Syrians.
The United Nations has said it is extremely concerned about the safety and protection of Syrian and Palestinian civilians at the Yarmouk camp.
Gunness said an estimated 94 civilians, including 43 women and 20 children, managed to leave the camp on Sunday and were provided with humanitarian support so there was no reason why more could not be helped to safety.
“For me it is unconceivable that the so-called civilized world can stand and watch what is going on in Yarmouk,” he said.
“We are facing a potential slaughter of the innocents and the world cannot stand by and watch that happen.”
Yarmouk situation desperate, says UN
Yarmouk situation desperate, says UN
Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s memoir recounts her journey after her son’s abduction by Hamas
- Random House announced Thursday that “When We See You Again” will be published April 26
- “I sat down to write my pain, and out poured loss, suffering, love, mourning, devotion, grief, adoration and fracturedness,” Goldberg-Polin said
NEW YORK: Rachel Goldberg-Polin, who has become known worldwide for her advocacy on behalf of her son and others abducted by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023, has a memoir coming out this spring.
Random House, an imprint of Penguin Random House, announced Thursday that “When We See You Again” will be published April 26.
“I sat down to write my pain, and out poured loss, suffering, love, mourning, devotion, grief, adoration and fracturedness,” Goldberg-Polin, a Chicago-born educator who now lives in Jerusalem, said in a statement. “This book recounts the first steps of a million-mile odyssey that will take the rest of my life to walk on shattered feet.”
Goldberg-Polin also will narrate the audio edition of “When We See You Again.”
Her son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was attending a southern Israel music festival when militants loaded him and other hostages onto the back of a pickup truck. Rachel Goldberg-Polin and her husband, Jon, traveled the world calling for the release of Hersh and others, meeting with President Joe Biden and Pope Francis, speaking at the United Nations and appearing at protest rallies. Each morning, she would write down on a piece of masking tape the number of days her son had been in captivity and stick it on her chest.
She continued her efforts after Israeli officials announced in September 2024 that the bodies of her son and five others had been found in an underground tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip. Israeli forensics experts said they had been shot at close range. Tens of thousands crowded into a Jerusalem cemetery as Hersh was laid to rest.
According to Random House, Rachel Goldberg-Polin will tell her story in “raw, unflinching, deeply moving prose.”
“She describes grief from within the midst of suffering, giving voice to the broken as she pours her pain, love, and longing onto the page,” announcement reads in part. “It is a story of how we remember and how we persevere, of how we suffer and how we love.”
