UN: 50,000 Syrian refugees trapped on Syria-Jordan border

Some 400 American and Jordanian military vehicles were located at a Jordanian military base 43km from the Syrian border on May 10, 2017. The tanks are supposedly Jordanian M60 types [Elam Al-Harbi/Syrian government’s War Information Centre]

The United Nations expressed concern yesterday over the safety of some 50,000 people trapped at Syria’s southern border with Jordan.

In a statement, the UN said the region where the refugees, mainly women and children, are stranded is not safe and is under air strikes from Jordan, which is battling Daesh.

It added that around 4,000 people near Hadalat crossing on the border were reportedly living only on flour and water.

“News reports say that there are repeated airstrikes in the area during the past few days and that caused instability and fear among the refugees,” the statement also said. “However, there were no casualties, but this pushed some of the refugees to head to the desert looking for safety.”

Read: Educating refugees in Za’atari a key to rebuilding Syria

Jordan shares a 375-kilometre border with its northern neighbour which has been engulfed by war since President Bashar Al-Assad violently repressed peaceful protests calling for his overthrow in 2011.

Jordan closed its border with Syria in June 2016 after a Daesh car bomb attack staged from near Rukban killed seven Jordanian border guards.

There are more than 1.3 million Syrian refugees in Jordan.

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.