Neirab camp

Neirab camp or Al-Nayrab camp is a Palestinian refugee camp that was set up near the village of Al-Neirab, 13 km from Aleppo, Syria. It was created in 1948–1950 following the Nakba.^[1]

It is the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria,^[2] with a reported number of 23,469 people as of 2024.^[1] It is also considered one of the poorest.^[3]

History

The camp was created in 1948 to accommodate for Palestinian refugees that fled during the Nakba.^[1][4] Originally, the camp consisted of barracks used by allied troops during World War II, but it quickly grew outside of those, due to the number of refugees.^[4]

There were plans by the UNRWA to remove the camp in the early 1960s, but those plans didn't come to fruition.^[5] In 1988, it was already the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria.^[6] In 2010s, the barracks were still seen by some refugees as a symbol of their origins and their struggles, even though most, if not all, of the barracks were destroyed since.^[4] The camp was described, around this period, as having "the most abysmal living conditions of all the Palestine refugees camps in Syria", by the UNRWA.^[4] The Syrian Air Force engaged in raids inside the camp to target militants there in the early 2010s.^[7]

A paramilitary group called Liwa al-Quds was formed with people from the camp during the Syrian civil war and was supportive of Bashar al-Assad.^[8] In 2016, the camp was cut from water supply for 80 days.^[9] The camp has suffered huge emigration, and most of the Palestinian refugees that manage to cross into Turkey from Syria come from Neirab and the nearby Ein Al-Tal camp.^[10]

On 28 September 2025, protests took place in the Neirab camp following the shooting of a Palestinian resident of the camp by members of the General Security Service. During these demonstrations, protestors chanted against the Syrian revolution and the Free Syrian Army.^[11]

Population

The population inside and on the surroundings of the camp grew quickly, and was at 13,032 people inside and 11,676 outside in 1988.^[6] As of 2019, it had a reported population of around 19,000 people,^[8] this number grew to a reported number of 23,469 people as of 2024.^[1] The population is mostly Sunni Palestinian.^[12] They hail mostly from the upper Galilee areas of the cities of Safdouka, Haifa and Tiberias, and from the villages of al-Tira, Lubya, Tarshiha, Hattin, Kweikat, al-Nahr, Safsaf, al-Tajr, Jish, Ain Ghazal, and others.^{[citation needed]} It is considered to be one of the poorer Palestinian refugee camps in Syria, alongside Ein Al-Tal, which is an offroot of Neirab.^[3][13]

Notable people

Neirab camp is the birthplace of the following people:

• Rima Hassan (born 1992), Palestinian–French jurist and member of the European Parliament^[14][15][16]