Rukban refugee camp
مخيم الركبان للاجئين | |
|---|---|
Area | |
  Rukban refugee camp | |
| Coordinates: 33°18′39.1″N 38°40′06.5″E / 33.310861°N 38.668472°E | |
| Country |  Syria |
| de facto control |  Free Syrian Army |
| Population | 11,000 |
The Rukban refugee camp (Arabic: مخيم الرُّكبان للاجئين) lies in southern Syria adjacent to the Jordan–Syria border, and close to the tripoint with Iraq. It is named after the nearby Rukban area, an arid remote region in northeastern Jordan.
The camp was established when refugees piled up on the Syrian side of the borders with Jordan in 2014, as it became 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.
In 2016, a car passing from the refugee camp in Syria managed to reach a Jordanian army outpost designated for the distribution of humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees. The car exploded, 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.
The population of the camp in Syria peaked at 45,000 in 2018. It suffered poor living conditions until its population later dwindled to 11,000 in 2019.[1]