Syrian rebels say Russian jets hit refugee camp along Jordan border
AMMAN (Reuters) - Jets believed to be Russian on Tuesday struck a refugee camp along Jordan's north-eastern border with Syria, killing at least 10 people and injuring scores, rebels said. Several jets flying at high altitudes struck at noon a makeshift camp where a few hundred, mostly women and children, are stranded in a no-man's-land on the Syrian side of the border, they said. Said Seif al Qalamoni, a rebel spokesman in a brigade that belongs to the Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), said the raids were close to the Hadalat refugee camp, one of two large camps in the area. Another rebel and a Western diplomat confirmed the incident. The camps with a population of at least 60,000 people fleeing from central and eastern Syria have been stranded for months in a desolate strip close to where the borders of Iraq, Syria and Jordan meet. Jordanian authorities bar their entry into the country on security grounds. The staunch U.S. ally declared its border area a closed military zone after a suicide bomber, believed to be an Islamic State militant, last month drove from the Syrian side near one of the two camps and rammed the vehicle into a Jordanian military base, killing seven border guards. The refugees are running out of food after since the Jordanian army sealed the area, international relief workers and refugees said last month. U.S.-backed rebels based in the Syrian border town of Tanf, further north-east, periodically clash with Islamic State militants who have a presence in the vast sparsely populated south-eastern Syria desert. The rebel base in Tanf was hit twice last month by Russian air strikes, even after the U.S. military used emergency channels to ask Moscow to stop after the first strike, U.S. officials said. (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
