Syria confirms closure of civil war-era desert camp, displaced return home

The Rukban displacement camp, which opened and was cut off in the height of the war in 2014, housed thousands of people.

The notorious Rukban displacement camp in the Syrian desert, a dark emblem of the country’s civil war, has closed, with the last remaining families returning to their hometowns.

Syrian Information Minister Hamza al-Mustafa said on Saturday on X that with the dismantlement of the camp, “a tragic and sorrowful chapter of displacement stories created by the bygone regime’s war machine comes to a close”.

“Rukban was not just a camp, it was the triangle of death that bore witness to the cruelty of siege and starvation, where the regime left people to face their painful fate in the barren desert,” he added.

The camp, established in 2014 at the height of the country’s ruinous civil war, was built in a deconfliction zone controlled by the United States-led coalition forces fighting against ISIL (ISIS).

The camp was used to house those fleeing ISIL fighters and bombardment by the then-government of President Bashar al-Assad, seeking refuge and hoping to eventually cross the border into Jordan.