Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Qamishli (Agenzia Fides) – It lasted only 72 hours, but was of great symbolic value, a popular campaign to collect food, drugs and clothing organised over the past few days by Christians in the Syrian city of Qamishli to help Yazidi people who fled Iraq fearing the Jihad warriors of the Islamic Caliphate and found refuge in Syrian territory close to a Refugee Camp in Newroz. Syrian sources told Fides that popular committees comprising also members of local militants of the Assyrian Democratic Party, put up a tent in the central area of Qamishli which for three days served as a point of collection of prime necessities to assist the latest waves of refugees coming into Syria, mainly from the northern Iraqi mountainous region of Sinjar. A group of young volunteers who took the supplies to the refugee camp, offered to work with other similar humanitarian initiatives to help refugees, a vaccination campaign, and the institution of a team of psychological support for women and children.
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, by the end of the third decade of August some 8.000 people– mainly belonging to the Yazida religious minority- had taken refuge in the camp at Newroz, some 60 kilometres from the border with Iraq, and about 3.000 others settled in Yazidi villages around the cities of Amuda and Derbassia. (GV) (Agenzia Fides 3/9/2014).
