HUNDREDS of ISIS terrorists, aided by Al Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra, have entered Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus, the Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said, anticipating ‘more crimes against the camp’s locals.’
In two identical letters to the UN Secretary-General and head of the UN Security Council, the ministry pressed the international community to pressure Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel and Jordan which support terrorists to get them out of the camp and save the lives of the residents.
The ISIS offensive is intended to expel the locals and abort a national reconciliation agreement in the camp that was due to be signed on Friday, the ministry said, warning that it puts at risk the lives of Palestinians and Syrians inside the camp. The new attack comes in the context of an upsurge in massacres by terrorists who are doing the bidding of foreign sides, the ministry added, blaming the Turkish and Jordanian regimes for facilitating the entry of thousands of trained terrorists into Syria.
‘Right from the beginning, Syria sought to prevent a Palestinians’ entanglement in the current events,’ the letters said, an effort that was sabotaged by Jabhat al-Nusra which facilitated the entry of terrorist organisations into the camp. The ministry considered that the new offensive clearly proves the involvement of Jabhat al-Nusra and other terrorist organisations in Israel’s attempts to ‘conspire against the Palestinian cause and end the Palestinians’ right to return’.
The Syrian government has spared no effort, in cooperation with UNRWA and other international organisations, to deliver humanitarian aid to the locals inside the camp that has been under a two-year siege which triggered a dire humanitarian tragedy.
‘Jabhat al-Nusra facilitated the entry of ISIS organisation into the camp, which proves that the two organisations are swapping roles as circumstances necessitate,’ said the ministry, ridiculing attempts to dub Jabhat al-Nusra as ‘the moderate opposition’. The ministry added that the regimes in Doha, Riyadh, Ankara, Amman and Tel Aviv try to refurbish and promote Jabhat al-Nusra to forward their agendas.
The Secretary of the Palestinian Revolution Factions Alliance Khaled Abdul-Majid has announced that ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists have committed massacres inside al-Yarmouk camp, killing at least nine people. Scores of the camps’ locals were kidnapped, he added.
‘Terrorists from ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra kidnapped scores of the camp’s locals, cut off the heads of five people and gunned down two others,’ he said in a statement to SANA, indicating that terrorists are rigging houses with explosives in an attempt to tighten control over the camp and seal it off.
Omar Khattab and Alaa Derbas succumbed to their wounds from clashes with ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, he said.
The camp has witnessed massive displacement, said Abdul-Majid, adding that the factions alliance has managed to push back ISIS terrorists in some areas inside the camp. He said fierce clashes took place near Salaheddin Mosque, Lubieh, Safad and Haifa Streets, with ISIS terrorists suffering big losses. Hamas said yesterday that its fighters are resisiting IS in the camp.
Around 2,000 people have been evacuated from the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus after the Islamic State group seized large parts of it, a Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) official said on Sunday. Around 400 families, approximately 2,000 people, were able to leave the camp on Friday and Saturday via two secure roads to the Zahira district, which is under army control,’ said PLO official Anwar Abdul Hadi.
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. Palestinian officials and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees have urged humanitarian access to the camp, where about 18,000 people remain under a government siege.
Hundreds rallied in the Gaza Strip on Saturday in support of thousands of fellow Palestinians trapped in Syria’s Yarmouk camp, which has been largely overrun by fundamentalist militants.
Hundreds, many waving Hamas flags, took to the streets in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis in a march organised by the Islamic movement, the de facto power in the coastal enclave. ‘We say it for the thousandth time: hands off the Yarmouk camp, hands off our people, hands off the slaughtered, killed and starved,’ senior Hamas official Salah al-Bardawil told them.
He called on the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA to use all the influence at its disposal. ‘Your role today is . . . to exert your pressure in order to find a way out for those besieged,’ he said.
Amid calls initiated by the Palestinian Authority and talks with Arab, international and humanitarian parties to intervene and put an end to the ongoing slaughter of helpless Palestinian refugees in al-Yarmouk refugee camp, PLO Executive Committee Member Saeb Erekat said that the situation is a reminder of the need for the Palestinians’ right to return. In a press statement on Sunday, Erekat stressed that the humanitarian disaster is a reminder of the need to realise the inalienable right of return for all Palestine refugees, in line with international law and relevant United Nations’ resolutions. ‘The tragedy unfolding in Al-Yarmouk shall remain a testament to the collective human failure of protecting civilians in times of war.’
Erekat called upon international bodies including the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Syrian government to take all necessary measures to immediately evacuate the camp’s refugees. ‘Time is quickly running out,’ Erekat said.
International and local media reported on witnesses in Al-Yarmouk refugee camp saying that the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had taken over large parts of Al-Yarmouk refugee camp, almost 90 per cent, and were threatening to control it completely. The camp, besieged by Bashar al-Assad regime forces for the last year, had fallen under the control of the Syrian al-Qaeda group Nusra Front. NBC-TV quoted an eyewitness saying Nusra Front was fighting alongside ISIS, which stormed the camp from the Hajar Aswad neighbourhood immediately south of it.
Meanwhile, Erekat reiterated that the persecution and slaughtering of Palestinian refugees continues in a conflict that isn’t theirs. Affirming the Palestinian Liberation organisation (PLO) and Palestinians’ ongoing policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states, Al-Yarmouk refugee camp continues to be the victim of the internal Syrian conflict nonetheless, said Erekat.
Activists on social media reported on ‘kidnappings, beheadings and mass killings are coming out from Al- Yarmouk, which is under a brutal campaign of murder and occupation at the hands of the terrorist group of Daesh and its allies’.
Erekat affirmed that the priority of all must be to save the unarmed and helpless Palestinian refugees in the camp by creating a safe passage for them out of the refugee camp.
Prior the Syrian civil war, 160,000 Palestinian refugees resided in the camp. However, a total of 18,000 refugees remain trapped in what Erekat described as a ‘death trap’. According to media and witnesses, refugees of Al-Yarmouk are now settling in different refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and others in Syria, making them refugees for one more time.
Erekat said that the PLO, through its envoys, has been trying for years to lift the siege.