DERIK, Syria (North Press) – Iman Haji Mame, an IDP from the city of Sere Kaniye residing in Newroz Camp in the countryside of Derik, far northeast Syria,attempts to use a book to fan her daughter to reduce the hot temperature inside the tent.
Mame’s tent, like all other tents in the camp, lacks any means of cooling, and even those lucky enough to possess fans have to electricity with which to power them in light of the frequent electricity blackouts and rationing in the camp.
Newroz Camp has a generator that provides power form 11 a.m. until 5 p.m.; however, it often malfunctions and shuts off amid the high temperatures.
Several days ago, the temperature in the Derik area reached 44 degrees Celsius (111 Fahrenheit). The temperature is expected to maintain its rates at noon during the upcoming three days, according to the Arabia Weather website.
“315 families reside in Newroz Camp; 1,600 people who fled after the Turkish invasion of Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad in 2019, and there are families from Kobani and Afrin as well,” according to the management of the camp.
“We have been here in the camp for two weeks. The heat affected my children’s health, especially my daughter who has seizures,” Mame said.
Absent organizations
IDPs are asking the camp management and the organizations to secure them cooling means, cold water, and summer clothes.
However, Camp Relations Officer Nadim Omar said, “no organization has provided any cooling means, such as fans and air conditioners.”
“The organizations promised us to provide the means, but we have not received any thing so far,” he added.
On Sunday, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) appealed to the international community and the United Nations to open Yaroubiyah (Tel Kocher) crossing with Iraq and to separate the humanitarian situation from the political interests of some countries.
Yaroubiyah crossing, which sits on the Syria-Iraq border and is the only crossing through which UN aid may enter the AANES’ regions in Syria’s northeast, has been closed for over two years after Russia and China used their veto in the UN Security Council to close the crossing to the passage of UN aid.
After the elimination of the Islamic State (ISIS), the areas held by AANES expanded, and the burden on it increased in the matter of the camps which are now hosting tens of thousands of displaced people, and this exceeds its absorptive capacity,” according to the AANES’s statement yesterday.
Increasing diseases
The children are the most affected by the sweltering temperatures. The number of patients suffering from seasonal diseases has increased from 30 to 45, including 25 children, according to co-chair of the Kurdish Red Crescent in Derik Ahmed Sheikhmous.
Khawla Hassan, an IDP from Sere Kaniye who has spent a year and a half in the camp, said that her child had fever and severe diarrhea due to the heatwave.
“I paid 70,000 SYP for his treatment,” she added.
The camp suffers from a shortage of medicine, according to Sheikhmous, who added that medical issues within the camp increased with the start of the heatwave.
The conditions varied between water-borne illness, acute diarrhea, enteritis, tonsillitis, bronchitis and allergic eczema, in addition to skin infections among infants.