WHO ramps up health support to camps in northeastern Syria in response to huge population movements

A boy plays with a homemade kite in Ain Issa Camp31 January 2018 – Sitting on the uneven floor of his small white tent in a displacement camp in northeastern Syria, Nasser Ali Mousa can find only one way to describe what his family went through in Raqqa during years of ISIL occupation and in the fierce battle to dislodge the group from the city.

“It was hell,” he says.

He looks at his grandson, Ra’ad, playing with a cherub-faced friend from the tent next-door. Ra’ad is wearing thick grey pants and a batman sweater. 

“The children saw corpses and destruction and experienced hunger and disease,” he continues. “It was very hard.”

Because of the conflict, it took Nasser and his family one month to reach this camp on a rocky desert plain in Ain Issa, about 50 kilometres north of Raqqa.