Russian jets hit refugee camp along Jordanian border, opposition says
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AMMANJul 14, 2016 - 12:00 am GMT+3
by
Jul 14, 2016 12:00 am
Jets believed to be Russian on Tuesday struck a refugee camp along Jordan's north-eastern border with Syria, killing at least 12 people and injuring scores in the first such Russian strike near the Jordanian border, an opposition spokesman said.
Several jets flying at high altitudes struck at noon a makeshift camp where a few hundred, mostly women and children, are stranded in a no-man's-land on the Syrian side of the border, the opposition said. The Russian Defence Ministry was not immediately available for comment.
Said Seif al Qalamoni, an opposition spokesman in a brigade that belongs to the Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), said the raids were close to the Hadalat refugee camp, one of two large camps in the area.
A senior Western diplomat confirmed the incident and said initial information was that several Russian jets conducted the raids.
If confirmed, these would be the closest aerial strikes by Moscow along the Jordanian border since the start of the Kremlin's major aerial bombing campaign last September in support of Bashar al Assad.
At least 40 people, mostly women and children, were injured in the strike. Jordanian army troops on the border helped rush the injured to hospitals inside the country, a Jordanian source said.
The desolate strip, close to where the borders of Iraq, Syria and Jordan meet, has two major camps with a population of at least 60,000 people who have been stranded there since fleeing central and eastern Syria. Jordanian authorities bar their entry into the country on security grounds.
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Research Associate at Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University
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