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'Aid enters' besieged Damascus camp of Yarmouk | |
(35 minutes later) | |
Aid has reached the besieged Palestinian camp of Yarmouk in the Syrian capital Damascus for the first time in months, Palestinian officials say. | |
Some 18,000 Palestinian refugees in the camp have not seen an aid delivery since July. | |
It is not clear how much aid has been allowed in the camp. | |
Reports from inside Yarmouk say at least 40 residents have died from hunger and lack of medical care. | |
Anwar Raja, a Palestinian official, told AP news agency that much of the material was carried "on the shoulders'' of members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command, whose militia has been allied to the government of President Bashar al-Assad. | |
Earlier this week the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) warned that the humanitarian situation inside Yarmouk was "worsening dramatically". | |
Yarmouk was once home to Syria's largest population of Palestinian refugees but most have fled since the conflict began. A community of 160,000-180,000 now numbers around 20,000 or less. | |
Aid officials in Damascus recently told the BBC that "the gates of Yarmouk" were slammed shut in July and almost no aid has been allowed to enter since then. |