“Food and medical shortages have killed at least 41 people in the past three months in Yarmouk” in southern Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.

Of the total, 24 have died as a result of malnutrition. The rest died either because of a lack of specialized treatment or because of a shortage of medicines, Observatory director Rami Abdel-Rahman said.

According to the Britain-based group, three of the fatalities were children and 13 of them women.

“Among them was a one-day-old child who could have survived had there been incubators,” Abdel-Rahman said.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has frequently warned about the dire conditions in Yarmouk.

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness Thursday described “extreme human suffering” in the Palestinian camp, saying food shortages continued and that the absence of medical care had led to women dying in childbirth.

The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Peter Maurer, meanwhile, also warned aid was not reaching civilians in Syria as he began a visit to Syria to assess the humanitarian situation and negotiate greater field access for the ICRC.

Yarmouk was once home to some 170,000 people but tens of thousands have fled after the foreign-backed militants entered the camp.

Syria is officially home to nearly 500,000 Palestinian refugees, around half of whom have been displaced by the conflict.

NTJ/HH