Royal pair see Syrian refugee camp (From Andover Advertiser)

Royal pair see Syrian refugee camp

8:24am Wednesday 13th March 2013 in National News © Press Association 2013

The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall are visiting a refugee camp which is home to people fleeing the Syrian civil war.

Charles and Camilla were greeted by United Nations staff at the King Abdullah Park camp in Jordan, close to the Syrian border.

The camp is home to just under 1,000 people who have fled the conflict.

Later they will visit a historic Jordanian Roman city and then leave for Qatar followed by Saudi Arabia and Oman.

Charles and Camilla visited a craft skills training centre for women and children. They then went to a nursery where around 20 children sat around tables and sang songs to them.

The camp is run by the United Nations, Unicef and Save the Children. The couple will also visit a family who have fled the Syrian violence.

Save the Children's chief executive, Justin Forsyth, welcomed the royal couple's visit to the camp.

"Their presence will help publicise the plight of the one million refugees - half of them children - who have had to flee their homes to escape the war," he said.

"There are still two million children inside Syria. If action is not taken soon to bring this conflict to an end, the physical and mental harm done to them could irreparably damage a generation of children."

More than 330,000 Syrians have sought refuge in Jordan since the war began, according to Unicef figures. A spokesman for the agency said 1,700 refugees were registered in Jordan in the past 24 hours, the highest number so far for a single day. Around 40,000 fled the war-torn country in January and numbers are expected to pass half a million by the summer as the fighting continues.