Food distribution in Yarmouk - 31 January 2014

Footage shot inside Yarmouk on 31 January and 24 February.

UNRWA has on several occasions succeeded in distributing food parcels, medicine and other supplies to the suffering and isolated civilians in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Damascus. On Monday 24 February UNRWA's Commissioner General, Filippo Grandi entered Yarmouk camp during the resumption of UNRWA's humanitarian aid distribution.  He was shocked by the condition of the Palestine refugees he spoke to and the extent of damage done to homes.

The camp, on the edge of Damascus, was once the bustling, vibrant heart of the Palestine refugee community in Syria, where 160,000 Palestinians lived in harmony with Syrians of all stripes. Over the past six months, it has become synonymous with infant malnutrition, women dying in childbirth for lack of medical care and besieged communities reduced to eating animal feed. Approximately 18,000 Palestinians and an unknown number of Syrians remain in the camp that has been reduced to rubble.

An UNRWA food parcel feeds a family of between five and eight for ten days. Intense humanitarian needs remain and UNRWA continues to push for an expanded humanitarian access that must be maintained for the exhausted and suffering civilians trapped inside the ruin landscape of Yarmouk.