Nine Palestinians Drown after Boat Capsizes in Turkey’s Territorial Waters

People hold a protest rally against a decision by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to reduce its services in the Gaza Strip, August 17, 2015.

UNRWA said it had been able to verify the outbreak after gaining access to residents of the district, sheltering in the nearby Yalda neighbourhood.

“Our concern is that these typhoid cases only represent the tip of the iceberg, because the erosion of health services and appalling public health standards create a massive, massive risk of diseases breaking out,” said UNWRA spokesman Chris Gunness.

The refugee agency also noted “credible reports” of a typhoid outbreak in additional areas of the region, including others in Yarmouk, Yalda, Babila, and Beit Sahem.

He pointed out that the transfer of any assistance to the Yarmouk camp was taking place under the coordination of the UN agencies and the Syrian government.

Millions of Syrians have been forced to flee to neighboring countries since the start of the civil war in 2011, and the refugee crisis has become the worst since World War II.

The capacity of the agency to sustain life-saving emergency interventions, whilst responding immediately to urgent developments such as the one impacting Yarmouk, is undermined by chronic underfunding for humanitarian interventions inside Syria.

Typhoid is a potentially deadly illness caused by the bacteria Salmonella typhi, which is spread by eating contaminated food or drinking contaminated water.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl said that before the Islamic State took control of Yarmouk in April, there were just 18,000 refugees living there.

Several thousand civilians have been able to leave the camp but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group and a Yarmuk resident told AFP that up to 14,000 people are still living inside.

Gunness repeated UNRWA’s longstanding call for humanitarian access to Yarmouk.

Announcing the doubling of confirmed typhoid cases in the camp to 11, Gunness said “we again make a strong demand for full humanitarian access”.

“UNRWA’s priority remains the delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians within Yarmouk itself”.