By NNN-KUNA,
Geneva : The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugeess (UNHCR) has said that some two dozen vulnerable Palestinian refugees stranded in the desert in the Al Waleed refugee camp on the Iraq-Syria border for the last two years will be leaving the camp in the next few weeks for Iceland.
According to UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond Tuesday, another group of 155 Palestinians stuck in no-man’s land between Syria and Iraq in the Al Tanf refugee camp have been accepted for resettlement in Sweden.
Redmond explained that the two groups include some of the most vulnerable women and children with urgent medical needs requiring immediate attention.
The refugee agency, he said, has for the past two years been seeking urgent humanitarian help for this group — even if temporary relocation elsewhere.
UNHCR figures indicate that an estimated 2,300 Palestinians are living in desperate conditions in two refugee camps along the Syria-Iraq border, unable to return to Iraq or to cross the borders to neighbouring countries.
The Al Waleed camp is presently home to over 1,400 refugees while the Al Tanf camp, situated within the no-man’s land between Iraq and Syria, has doubled in size since October 2007, with close to 900 refugees living there.
The UNHCR has repeatedly called for international support for the Palestinians but with few results.
At least 223 Palestinians have left for non-traditional resettlement countries such as Brazil and Chile. Some urgent medical cases were taken by a few European countries, but this is a very small number out of the 2,300 Palestinians stranded in the desert.