UN delivers food to district of Syria's capital

The relief agency supporting Palestinian refugees resumed food distribution inside the rebel-held district of the Syrian capital that has suffered from crippling shortages of food and medicine for months, a United Nations spokesman said today.
'The UNRWA announcement comes as Western and Arab nations supporting a UN Security Council resolution demanding immediate access across Syria to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid called for a vote on the measure this week, even though diplomats say Russia is opposed to key provisions.
Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the UN agency that administers Palestinian refugee camps around the Middle East, said in a statement that the Syrian government granted access for relief workers to enter Yarmouk yesterday after an 11-day halt. He said 280 families received food parcels yesterday and that workers are preparing to deliver more food to about 18,000 Yarmouk residents today.

The Yarmouk refugee camp, located in southern Damascus, is one of the hardest-hit opposition enclaves that have been under tight blockades imposed by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad. More than 100 people have died in Yarmouk since mid-2013 as a result of starvation and illnesses exacerbated by hunger or lack of medical aid, according to UN figures.
Before the conflict, Yarmouk was the largest of nine Palestinian camps in Syria. Most of the camp's 150,000 inhabitants fled, according to UNRWA, when armed opposition fighters entered the district in late 2012. Syrian troops surrounded the area and carried out several air strikes.

When the uprising against Assad erupted in March 2011 most Palestinians in Syria stayed on the sidelines, but as the civil war reached Yarmouk in December 2012, many backed the rebels and some took up arms to fight alongside the opposition fighters, including the hard-line Islamic groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front.
Some Palestinian groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command have been fighting alongside Assad's troops in Yarmouk.