Rukban

Rukban الركبان
Area
Rukban
Coordinates: 33°18′51.1″N 38°42′10.1″E / 33.314194°N 38.702806°E / 33.314194; 38.702806

Rukban (Arabic: الرُّكبان, romanized: Al-Rukban) is an arid remote area in northeast Jordan adjacent to the Jordan–Syria border, and close to the tripoint with Iraq.

The area became in 2014 one of the crossing points for Syrian refugees fleeing the Syrian Civil War. While Jordan welcomed hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, the country specifically blocked the refugees at Rukban from entering, citing security concerns regarding the presence of hidden ISIS sleeper cells. This led to thousands of refugees piling up on the Syrian side of the border, creating the Rukban refugee camp.

In 2016, a car passing from the refugee camp in Syria managed to reach a Jordanian army outpost, exploding and killing 6 and injuring 14 Jordanian soldiers. Jordan thereafter declared its eastern and northern border closed military zones. The camp in Syria witnessed further incidents, including two car bomb attacks that killed tens of refugees in 2016 and 2017.^[1]

In 2024, a small US army outpost based in Rukban, known as Tower 22, was targeted by a drone attack launched by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which killed 3 American soldiers and injured at least 34 others.^[2]