Winter emergency plan for Syrian refugee camps in Jordan

“The administration [in charge of Syrian refugee camps] has taken the necessary measures to address any emergency before the start of winter; opening and cleaning drains, determining hazardous locations that are prone to flooding, preparing backup tents and forming a fully equipped emergency team for each area in case of any emergency,” a security source told the Anadolu news agency.

In an exclusive statement, the source added: “We worked on solving the problems suffered by Zaatari camp at the beginning of its establishment which we were able to correct last year.”

The source indicated that “the administration held a special meeting, in coordination with the UN Refugee Agency, with a group of professional engineers to divert the flow of water towards the valleys for water drainage in the Azraq camp [east of the capital Amman], which home 14,493 refugees.”

The department of refugee camps yesterday revealed the entry of 1,097 Syrian refugees into Jordan over the past three days, at a time when international organisations are accusing Jordan and Syria’s other neighbours of “closing their borders in the face of Syrian refugees”.

The Zaatari camp is considered the largest refugee camp for Syrians in Jordan, with more than 79,000 residents. There are more than 647,000 officially registered Syrian refugees in Jordan, according to official statistics, in addition to 750,000 Syrians who entered Jordan before the crisis.

The length of the Jordanian-Syrian border exceeds 375 kilometres that are interspersed with dozens of illegal crossings that are used by Syrian refugees to enter Jordan.