Lawmakers urge US action on Syria's crisis-hit Rukban camp
The Biden administration faces congressional pressure to help desperate civilians stranded in the Syrian camp near Jordan.
A group of lawmakers has urged the Biden administration to address a humanitarian crisis unfolding near a US military outpost in Syria, according to a congressional letter obtained by Al-Monitor.
Food, clean water and medicine are running scarce at Rukban camp, a tented settlement housing thousands of internally displaced civilians who fled the country’s protracted conflict and are now stranded in a no man's land in Syria’s southeastern desert.
President Bashar al-Assad’s government and its main ally Russia have blocked humanitarian convoys from crossing regime-held territory into the camp. The last truckloads of UN aid deliveries reached Rukban in February 2019.
“We do not have a moment to waste,” four lawmakers led by Rep. Marie Newman (D-Ill.) wrote Friday to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Agency for International Development administrator Samantha Power.
