HASAKAH, Syria (North Press)- Under a tent which lacks every basic item, Fatima has her four kids sitting on a thin mat that does not shields them against the cold ground. Not a single carpet, sponge, heater, domestic gas cylinder or a good blanket is seen under the tent among other winter needs.
Fatima Ahmad, 35, looks at the sky which is about to rain, “It seems we are going to endure another hard night,” an indication that signals their bad situation where it rains.
Fatima, who comes from the city of Sere Kaniye, is not an isolated case; this echoes the plight of 276 families living in a specific phase in the Sere Kaniye IDP camp in east of Hasakah city which was created last year to accommodate IDP families displaced from the town of Zirgan (Abu Rasin) owing to repeated Turkish shelling.
With repeated applications by families living in accommodation centers, mostly schools, in the city of Hasakah, the Zirgan IDPs were moved to this phase of the camp.
This phase which is located on the outskirt of the camp has 360 tents homing 277 families comprising 1.783 individuals. The camp has 15.500 people in total making 2.573 families, mostly from Sere Kaniye and its countryside.
This phase of the camp lacks every kind of aid or basic needs of an everyday life or those essential for winter. At night, darkness prevails at the camp as no power is available. Furthermore, the situation becomes worse when it rains.
Late in November, IDPs in the camp had hard times after their phase was submerged with rain. The camp management, in cooperation with an NGO, installed new tents in the camp on a higher spot to move IDPs there as an emergency measure before returning them to their tents.
Water and mud prevent IDPs to move freely. Water tankers and cars that used to bring in bread were not able to access the camp. Amid this status of the affair, the sick and the elderly were the most affected.
Faced with the suffering that seems to aggravate day after another and as heavy rains are anticipated in the coming days, Fatima, who lost her husband nearly five years ago and was allowed to the camp a couple of months ago from an accommodation center in the city of Hasakah, says, “People hope for rainfalls. However, rain makes our living a bad one.”
The camp is not fenced, allowing stray dogs to sneak into tents at night. Occasionally, such cases are not uncommon occurrences.
Riyadh Mar’i, Director of the Relations Office in the camp, said the operating NGOs in the camp do not target IDPs in the new phase. “They do not consider them within their arena of targeting.”
There are eight local and international NGOs operating at the camp. However, they cannot cover all of the IDPs’ needs, according to the camp management.
Mar’i noted that all tents and blankets among other service- related items are provided by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). “There is no serious address by humanitarian NGOs to camps in the region.”
It is scheduled that within the few coming days, IDPs have their rations of diesel (four litters per day) delivered.
Sara al-Abdullah, 28, an IDP from Sere Kaniye, says this quantity is short of their need, a view shared by all IDPs living in the camp.
“A tent here is like a fridge. How could four litters of diesel suffice us?” Sara said, calling for an increase in diesel rations.
Responding to a question on their current situation, Amina al-Aweid, 53, says “Terrible.”
Amina asked winter-related needs and equipment to be delivered soon to shield them from the winter’s breeze.