Syria: Refugee camp called “triangle of death” closes

The new Syrian government has closed down the Rukban refugee camp whose poor conditions led to significant criticism, according to the Middle East Eye on June 7th.

The Rukban camp was set up in the early years of the civil war that began in Syria in 2011. It sat by the Jordanian border, and when the border closed in 2016 the camp stopped receiving regular aid deliveries.

The inhabitants lived in makeshift dwellings and went largely without food, medical provisions, health faciltities, water or sanitation, and an education system. 

Rukban once had up to 100,000 inhabitants, but due to the dire conditions the numbers fell over the years. A Syrian Emergency Task Force spokesperson stated that the camp is “closed and empty”, with its residents having returned home.

Syria’s Information Minister stated on June 7th on X that the camp’s closure amounts to the end of “a tragic and sorrowful chapter of displacement stories created by the bygone regime’s war machine.” The minister also said: “Rukban was not just a camp, it was the triangle of death that bore witness to the cruelty of siege and starvation, where the regime left people to face their painful fate in the barren desert.”

Since the fall of the Assad regime in December last year, many Syrians living in refugee camps like Rukban have starting going back to their homes as they are no longer concerned about the consequences they would have faced from Assad’s regime.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has said that roughly 1.87 million Syrians have returned home since December 2024, but the “lack of economic opportunities and essential services” still presents a challenge for returnees.

Although many feel free to return home, there are still groups in Syria who face retribution from the government- mainly the Alawites, who dominated under the Assad regime, Maghrebi.org reported on May 26th. 

Middle East Eye, Maghrebi.org