At Syria-Iraq checkpoint more refugee deaths blamed on strict entry rules

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - At least four people, including a child and old woman, have died at Syria’s Rajm Slebi checkpoint, where two children fleeing the war in the Iraqi city of Mosul were reported to have died of the cold.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said it  had “ documented the death of at least four including a child girl and an elderly woman at the Rajm Slebi checkpoint.”

It said they died “as a result of the shortage of medicine and the necessary treatment and the dire health and humanitarian condition.”

It explained that the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are continuing to “stop (Syrian) citizens from entering the city of Hasakah,” which led to the four deaths.

 

Only those who can obtain “a local guarantor,” or Kafil in Arabic, are allowed through, while others are either left at the checkpoint or forced to pay for human trafficker, SOHR added.

All of the four, who died in the last “days and weeks,” are Syrian citizens, according to SOHR.

Local Syrian media reported last week that two children who fled the ongoing war in the Iraqi city of Mosul had died of the cold,  although the UN agency whose field teams visited the checkpoint at least twice last week did not confirm that report.

The UN refugee, UNHCR, told Rudaw English on Saturday that it had deployed a mobile clinic to the checkpoint that will visit every two days to help people fleeing the fighting, saying it hoped that would rise to a daily basis.

The checkpoint is controlled by the Kurdish authorities in Syria’s Hasakah province, some 30 km from the UN-funded al-Hol camp, which hosts Iraqi refugees and internally displaced Syrians.

At least one local media report and another Syrian rights group has said that authorities stop the refugees and the Syrian displaced people from crossing the checkpoint. 

Kurdish security forces in northern Syria introduced stricter security measures on the movement of people into and out of its territory after a bombing in Syria’s Qamishli in the summer killed at least 50 people.

Scott Craig, UN agency spokesperson in Syria told Rudaw on Sunday that his agency cannot “directly observe” the checkpoint.

 

Meanwhile, the UNHCR reported a convoy of 450 arriving at the al-Hol camp on Sunday, saying 400 of them were Iraqis.

UNHCR said that, as of last Monday there were 1,200 Iraqi refugees -- half of them children and 200 under the age of five – at the camp. Two hundred of them were reported with injuries.

The UN agency expressed is readiness to provide emergency relief at  Rajm Slebi, but warned it cannot care for the refugees and the IDPs “at a border checkpoint.

SOHR said that local authorities are not providing services to the trapped people and that relief organizations also have not responded to their needs. It called on the authorities to ease entry requirements for fleeing civilians.