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Along Syria-Jordan Border, Refugees Struggle At A Camp Aid Workers Can't Visit

In the Syrian desert near Jordan's border, some 60,000 refugees live in dire conditions. A trip with the Jordanian military provided a glimpse of the Rukban camp. Few outsiders have seen it.
A tribal leader from the Rukban camp tries to get help for children from Raqaa who were separated from their parents, who were allowed into Jordan two years ago after their father became ill.

In the middle of the desert, hundreds of miles from the nearest city, 60,000 Syrians are camped out along the Syrian and Jordanian border in what has become one of the biggest and most desperate refugee settlements in the region. Few outsiders have ever seen it.

NPR visited an area near the camp last week in a trip organized by the Jordanian military.

Aid groups, who have no direct access to the three-year-old camp, track its growth by analyzing showing thousands of makeshift tents clustered between two berms — earthen embankments in a no-man's land along Jordan's far northeastern

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