Palestine refugee receive tents – Press release

UNITED NATIONS

Department of Public Information

Press and Publications Bureau

Lake Success, New York

Press Release PAL/339

16 October 1948

PALESTINE REFUGEES RECEIVE 2,000 TENTS

(The following has been received at UN Headquarters from the UN Press Officer

in Beirut, relayed through Paris.)

Twenty trucks carrying 2,000 tents to refugees from the Palestine fighting left Beirut yesterday (15 October) and today in an emergency operation organized by the United Nations Disaster Relief Project.  It was the largest single delivery yet made by this mission.

Fifteen hundred of the tents went to Amman to provide shelter for some 25,000 refugees in Transjordan, northern Palestine, and the Arab part of Jerusalem; the other 500 went to Damascus for refugees in Syria.  Lebanon had already received 500 tents.

It was at first intended to rail the tents, but because of the arrival of the cool season and of report on conditions among tens of thousands of shelterless refugees the Disaster Relief Project decided to hire trucks to rush the tents to the refugees.

For Arab refugees living in the southern part of Palestine, 1,000 tents have been bought by the Project in Cairo and will be delivered soon.

In further preparation against the approaching winter the Project has bought 45,000 "V" blankets, of which 40,000 will be distributed among Arab refugees in  Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan and northern Palestine and 5,000 will go to southern Palestine.

Progress is being made also with food shipments to the refugees.  Thirty tons of wheat flour and four tons of powdered milk and meat are scheduled to leave Beirut by rail on 18 October for Amman.  Within a few days a further 300 tons of food will be dispatched to refugees in Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan and northern Palestine.

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