AMMAN: For nearly a week, the flow of Jordanian-supplied water to a remote displacement camp on Syria’s southern border has been mostly cut off, sources on the ground told Syria Direct on Thursday, leaving tens of thousands of residents with reduced access.
Officially, water reaches the Rukban camp—home to roughly 60,000 displaced Syrians—via two water pumps based directly across the border in Jordan.
The reason for the cutoff is "maintenance work" on the pump, Mohammad Jarrah, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army-aligned Maghawir a-Thawra militia told Syria Direct from Rukban. His faction maintains a presence in the camp, where fighters claim they work to “secure” the informal settlement.
A UN official who spoke with Syria Direct on Thursday confirmed “ongoing maintenance work” on the broken water pump.
The second pump supplying water into the camp, though reportedly still functional, is located some seven kilometers away from Rukban, and overseen—though unofficially—by rebel factions who demand a steep price for filling up there, a former camp official told Syria Direct during the last cutoff in June.
“Water from the well costs around SP1,200 [approximately $2] per 200-liter barrel,” a-Darbas added—still an exorbitant cost for Rukban’s impoverished, displaced residents. “And the water itself tastes of sulfur. It’s disgusting."
This week, even residents resorting to expensive, questionable local well water from sellers outside the camp often returned to their tents in Rukban empty handed.