ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Syrian regime checkpoints are preventing medical aid and personnel from entering the Shahba canton of northern Syria unless they pay "taxes", an official in charge of camps in northeast Syria (Rojava) has said, despite Syria's countrywide battle with coronavirus.
Only the regime-affiliated Syrian Red Crescent is allowed to operate in Shahba, an area of Aleppo province controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and home to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs), Rojava official Sheikhmus Ahmed told Rudaw English on Sunday.
“Unfortunately, they [Syrian regime] do not allow us to send medical aid and health workers there. They create obstacles. They also put taxes on aid,” Ahmed said.
Shahba is a pocket of land isolated from other areas held by the SDF. Turkey-backed armed groups surround Shahba on three sides, while Syrian regime forces lie to Shahba's south. The enclave is home to some 200,000 Kurdish IDPs who fled their hometown of Afrin in March 2018 after Turkey and its Syrian proxies invaded the city, according to data from Rojava Information Center (RIC), a local monitor which on Sunday released its latest weekly report on the spread of coronavirus in the area.
According to the report, Shahba's 200,000 IDPs are suffering from "shortages of medical supplies and aid drought due to Syrian Government embargo.”
Rojava registered its first coronavirus cases at the end of April. To date, it has recorded 624 cases of the virus, including 40 deaths and 158 recoveries, according to data from Rojava health board co-chair Jwan Mustafa released Friday. No statement with updated coronavirus numbers has been released since.
Despite the spread of coronavirus through Rojava and Syria, no residents within Shahba's five camps are known to have been infected, Ahmed said; however, “some people outside the camps have been infected, and some have died.”
Outbreak fears in Shahba has been heightened with people from virus-hit Aleppo arriving "illegally" and potentially bringing the virus into the area, an unnamed local medical source told RIC.
“We have not received any aid save for deliveries from the AANES [Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria], which arrived with great difficulty, due to bribes demanded by the Syrian Government’s security checkpoints. The Russian forces do not help at all, and we have received nothing from international agencies or the United Nations,” said the medical source.
“Due to the embargo imposed on the area and the restrictions imposed by the checkpoints of the security services of the Syrian regime, IDPs have found and are finding great difficulty in securing masks and medical gloves, which cost a lot. Pharmacies sell masks and gloves at high prices, with each mask costing 500-1000 SYP [$0.25-0.50] Those who cannot afford this rely on the handmade ones or remain without masks,” the source added.
