ISIS takes Yarmouk refugee camp

Syria, PLO support military solution in Yarmouk

Daily Star,

8 April, 2015

BEIRUT / DAMASCUS: Syrian aircraft bombed the besieged Yarmouk neighborhood of Damascus and a next-door ISIS stronghold Wednesday as Palestinian factions said they were working on forming a “strike force” to fight the jihadi group.

Palestinian media reports said that after intensive meetings between Syrian government officials and their counterparts from the Palestine Liberation Organization and other factions, a joint military force – including a Yarmouk-based rebel faction – would be put together to fight jihadis from ISIS who launched a surprise attack on Yarmouk a week ago.

Several anti-regime media outlets said that clashes continued in Yarmouk and the next-door suburb of al-Hajar al-Aswad between the Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis rebel militia and ISIS militants. Both areas were targeted by airstrikes, including barrel bombs dropped by helicopter, they said.

Syria’s Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar said the crisis required a military operation.

“The priority now is to expel and defeat militants and terrorists in the camp,” he said, after meeting Palestine Liberation Organization official Ahmed Majdalani, who arrived Tuesday from Ramallah.

“Under the present circumstances, a military solution is necessary,” Haidar said.

He did not spell out when a military operation might begin or how it would be waged, but suggested that Syrian troops could be involved.

“The Syrian state will decide whether the battle requires it,” he said.

ISIS forces attacked Yarmouk on April 1 and have seized control of large parts of the camp, executing fighters from Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis.

Majdalani, speaking after meeting Haidar, said the Palestinian leadership would back whatever measures the Syrian government decided on.

“It is more and more difficult to talk about a political solution in the camp,” he said.

“The Palestinian leadership will support any decision by the Syrian government,” he added.

But it remains unclear whether that will be accepted by all Palestinian factions, including the Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis, which has led the fight against ISIS in Yarmouk – Palestinian media reports indicated that the Aknaf group would be a part of the “strike force” being considered, although its links to Hamas could earn it a veto from Damascus, which is at odds with the Palestinian group.

Hamas has denied that it is linked to Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis.

Inside the camp, concern has grown for the fate of thousands of residents, with the EU saying it would provide 2.5 million euros in emergency funding to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA.

There have been wildly conflicting reports of how many people remain left in Yarmouk – a Palestinian activist group in the camp told The Daily Star it believed some 12,000 people were left out of nearly 20,000 before the latest round of clashes began.

Hundreds of residents have left for the nearby suburb of Yalda, where they have begun to receive humanitarian assistance.

But as fighting intensified in and around the camp, the remaining refugees have been left without food, water and medical supplies prompting aid agencies to call for the warring parties to allow access for aid and evacuations.

“The level of inhumanity that Yarmouk has descended to is frankly unimaginable,” Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), told Reuters in a Skype interview from Jerusalem.

“The situation is absolutely desperate. We need urgently to have humanitarian access, which is why UNRWA is calling for all parties to exercise influence with their clients on the ground so that we can get into the camp.”

Elsewhere, Syrian regime forces launched a campaign in Idlib in the northwest, according to multiple sources, as rebel groups responded by upping their attacks in next-door Hama province in a bid to stall the attack.

Pro-regime sources said it was unclear whether the offensive was meant to retake the provincial capital of Idlib, lost to a rebel coalition late last month – or relieve pressure on a military base in the village of Mastouma, south of Idlib, which has been subject to intermittent rebel attacks.

In the southern province of Deraa, where regime troops lost the village of Kafr Shams this week to rebel groups, an airstrike on the village of Giza killed seven people, among them women and children, multiple sources said.

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From 2 days ago

2,000 evacuated from Syria's Yarmouk after ISIS advance: Palestinians

Daily Star (Lebanon),

6 April, 2015

DAMASCUS: Around 2,000 people have been evacuated from the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus after ISIS seized large parts of it, a Palestinian official told AFP Sunday.

"Around 400 families, approximately 2,000 people, were able to leave the camp Friday and Saturday via two secure roads to the Zahira district, which is under army control," said Anwar Abdul Hadi, a Palestine Liberation Organization official.

Abdul Hadi said Syrian troops had helped in the evacuation, which came as Palestinian forces battled to hold back IS fighters who have captured large swathes of the camp since Wednesday.

He said most of those evacuated from the camp were being hosted in government shelters, with at least 25 wounded taken to two hospitals in Damascus.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based activist group, confirmed that "hundreds" of people had been evacuated from the camp.

The group said at least 26 people, including civilians as well as fighters from ISIS and Palestinian factions, had been killed in the camp since Wednesday.

Since the jihadi advance, regime forces have pounded the camp with shells and barrel bombs, according to the Observatory.

Palestinian officials and the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA have urged humanitarian access to the camp.

Yarmouk, in south Damascus, was once home to 160,000 people, Syrians as well as Palestinians.

But its population has dwindled to just 18,000 since the uprising erupted in March 2011.

The camp is encircled by government forces and was under a tight siege for more than a year.

An agreement last year between rebels and the government, backed by Palestinian factions, led to an easing of the siege, but humanitarian access has remained limited.

ISIS fighters attacked the camp Wednesday, and were initially largely repelled, but were subsequently able to capture large parts of it.

Palestinian officials have accused Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Al-Nusra Front of helping ISIS to enter the camp.

Among the deaths in the fighting were at least two Palestinian militants reportedly beheaded by ISIS, according to the Observatory and jihadi social media accounts.

Syrian forces remain outside the camp, and sources said troops had set up additional checkpoints around Yarmouk after the fighting began.