{"id":40678,"date":"2019-08-30T15:23:13","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T15:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=40678"},"modified":"2019-08-30T15:23:13","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T15:23:13","slug":"uk-calls-for-broad-support-to-tackle-gulf-shipping-threats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=40678","title":{"rendered":"UK calls for broad support to tackle Gulf shipping threats"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"59\">\n<p>\nBEIRUT: The United Nations said Friday it will help evacuate civilians from an \u201cabysmal\u201d Syrian desert camp near the border with Jordan, after a mission last week determined who wanted to leave.<br \/>\u201cWe are ready to facilitate\u201d evacuations from the Rukban camp, said Panos Moumtzis, the UN\u2019s Syria humanitarian chief.<br \/>\u201cWe want to make sure it happens in a voluntary way,\u201d he told AFP during an interview in Beirut, describing the situation in the settlement as \u201cabysmal.\u201d<br \/>According to the UN official, around 12,700 people remain in the isolated Rukban camp near a base used by the US-led coalition fighting the Daesh group.<br \/>The Syrian government and key backer Russia said in February they had opened corridors out of the camp, calling on residents to leave.<br \/>More than half of the original population has left in the past months, the United Nations says.<br \/>The UN and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent sent a mission to the camp last week to determine how many people remained inside and who wanted to leave, the UN official said.<br \/>\u201cA little bit more than a third of them want to leave,\u201d Moumtzis said.<br \/>\u201cThe vast majority want to go into government-held areas and some others want to go to the north,\u201d held by the opposition, he added.<br \/>But the UN is not able to provide protection guarantees after civilians quit the camp, he said.<br \/>Some 47 percent of surveyed camp residents said they wanted to stay, citing reasons including \u201csecurity concerns\u201d and \u201cfear of detention.\u201d<br \/>Rights groups have warned that civilians returning to government-held territory have faced detention and conscription.<br \/>Those fleeing to the rebel-held north might face violence in the Idlib region, where Russian and regime bombardment have killed more than 950 people since April.<br \/>Although Rukban has not received aid since February, the latest UN mission did not deliver any relief items beyond \u201ca minimal number of health supplies,\u201d Moumtzis said.<br \/>But last week\u2019s visit is only the first part of a \u201ctwo-step\u201d plan \u2014 the second of which will involve aid delivery, according to the UN official.<br \/>\u201cThe next mission \u2014 I hope very quickly \u2014 will go back and deliver the desperately needed assistance,\u201d he said, without providing a specific date.<br \/>Conditions inside Rukban are dire, with many surviving on just one simple meal a day, often bread and olive oil or yoghurt, according to one resident.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BEIRUT: The United Nations said Friday it will help evacuate civilians from an \u201cabysmal\u201d Syrian desert camp near the border with Jordan, after a mission last week determined who wanted to leave.\u201cWe are ready to facilitate\u201d evacuations from the Rukban camp, said Panos Moumtzis, the UN\u2019s Syria humanitarian chief.\u201cWe want to make sure it happens&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":40679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}