AFP, Ain Issa :
Khadija Alloush made it out alive from Syria’s battle-ravaged Raqa with her five children, but she lost her seven-year-old son to the biting cold of life in a displacement camp.
As temperatures drop, tens of thousands of civilians forced out of their homes by Syria’s war are spending yet another winter in flimsy plastic tents or abandoned half-finished buildings.
And without heating, blankets and warm clothes, or access to proper medical care, even a simple cold can turn deadly.
“My son died because of the cold,” weeps Khadija, 35, her features drawn and exhausted a week after the sudden death of little Abdel Ilah.
After fleeing fighting in the Islamic State group’s former bastion Raqa, Khadija’s family sought refuge in the Ain Issa camp about 50 kilometres (30 miles) north.
Now nighttime temperatures are plummeting to just four degrees Celsius (39 Fahrenheit).
“He coughed and had a fever in the middle of the night. The next day, he was dead,” Khadija tells AFP, drawing her four young children close to her.
“May God spare us in this cold,” she says.
More than 17,000 people have sought refuge in the Ain Issa camp’s 2,550 tents, set up in neat rows exposed to the elements.
Most of the residents fled assaults against IS in Raqa, as well as Syria’s province of Deir Ezzor to the southeast.
Many of their homes have been flattened, their towns and villages reduced to ruins without electricity or running water. Returning is not an option.According to the United Nations, which supports the camp, there is no new health care clinic to cater for expanding areas of the sprawling facility.
More than half of the residents say their tents need repairs or maintenance to protect against the cold.
To keep the inside of their tents dry, many in the camp have put up an extra layer of nylon tarps and resort to using rocks to weigh down plastic sheeting to prevent water seeping in.
