Islamic State attacks Yarmouk refugees
Not Gaza this time but Yarmouk refugee camp. The destruction here is caused by bombing by the Assad regime. ISIL destroys other Muslims and religious sites.
Islamic State Seizes Palestinian Refugee Camp in Syria
By Anne Barnard, NY Times
April 04, 2015
AMMAN, Jordan — Islamic State militants have seized most of a sprawling Palestinian refugee district in the southern part of the Syrian capital, Damascus, an area that has been under siege and bombardment for nearly two years already, according to Palestinian and United Nations officials and residents.
The officials called for quick action by international organizations, the Syrian government and all armed groups to head off an unfolding catastrophe. Reports of killings and even beheadings were beginning to circulate on Saturday, worsening what is already a longstanding humanitarian nightmare for the 18,000 residents of the Yarmouk refugee camp.
By seizing much of the camp, the Islamic State terrorist group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, made its greatest inroads yet into Damascus, a significant step for a group that rose largely in the northern and eastern provinces of Syria, far from the capital. Yet at the same time, the move suggests that as the Islamic State loses ground in Iraq and northeastern Syria, the most daring response it could muster on the ground was to attack one of the most vulnerable populations in Syria.
Most of all, the attack was a perverse answer to the question of how life in Yarmouk could get worse. Many residents’ very presence there is a scar from a previous war; they are descended from Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war over Israel’s founding.
More recently, they have been blockaded and bombarded by the Syrian government for nearly two years, and ruled internally by a tangled web of armed groups, including Syrian insurgents and Palestinian factions, said by residents to siphon scarce food to their own fighters and families.
While Palestinian leaders had initially sought to maintain neutrality in Syria’s war, in reality, Palestinian refugees living in Syria — who had more rights there than in other countries and therefore had a greater stake in society — have strong sympathies on both sides of the conflict. Some supported President Bashar al-Assad, seeing him as a champion of the Palestinian cause, while others became leaders in the initial political uprising against him. Hamas, the powerful Palestinian Sunni militant group, broke with Mr. Assad over what it saw as his repression of an uprising led by fellow Sunni Muslims, but has lately sought a measure of reconciliation.
Nevertheless, Palestinians are caught in the middle, and most of the camp’s 160,000 prewar residents, once the world’s largest concentration of Palestinian refugees outside the West Bank and Gaza, have been scattered in what some are calling a second Nakba, or catastrophe, the Palestinians’ name for the events of 1948.
“For over 700 days, the camp has been the victim of a draconian siege, which has resulted in the death by starvation of at least 200 Palestinians,” Saeb Erekat, the longtime Palestinian peace negotiator with Israel, said in a statement issued Saturday that called on all parties to provide civilians with safe passage out of the “death trap.”
He said the humanitarian disaster underscored the vulnerability of Palestinian refugees and their need for a “right of return” to reclaim homes in what is now Israel, one of the thorniest issues in world affairs. But for the time being, he added, “Yarmouk shall remain a testament to the collective human failure of protecting civilians in times of war.”
The fighting in Yarmouk was also a testament to the complexity of the Syrian conflict, where various insurgent groups are battling both the government and the Islamic State amid shifting and contradictory alliances.
At first, the latest chapter appeared to have begun with low-level disputes between ISIS militants in the neighboring suburb of Hajar al-Aswad and members of a Hamas-affiliated militia in the camp, Aknaf Bayt al-Maqdis.
But as the Hamas-linked fighters clashed with ISIS and tried to keep it from establishing a foothold in the camp, members of the Nusra Front, a Qaeda affiliate that has a major presence there, did not help, several residents said. Some said that despite its rivalry with the Islamic State elsewhere, the Nusra Front actively prevented other insurgent groups from sending reinforcements from nearby suburbs, and that many of its members defected to ISIS.
Anwar Raja, a spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a pro-Assad group, said Nusra and the Islamic State were “all the same” and the latest fighting showed that recent talks to reach a settlement for the camp were “nonsense and promotion for terrorism.”
In spite of the difficulties they face, Yarmouk residents have continued to produce films and music about their and Syria’s plight, making the camp a symbol of resilience as well as suffering. But adding an ISIS occupation onto everything else, one Palestinian resident of Damascus said, “would be catastrophic.”
Hwaida Saad and Maher Samaan contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.
UN official: State of Yarmouk refugee camp ‘beyond inhumane’
Official says Palestinian camp under attack from Syrian regime after Islamic State stormed it last week
Associated Press / Ynet news
April 066, 2015
Shelling and sporadic clashes struck a Palestinian refugee camp under attack by Islamic extremists in the Syrian capital Monday, a situation that a United Nations official described as “beyond inhumane.”
Hatem al-Dimashqi, an activist based in an area just south of Damascus, said the Yarmouk camp was under attack Monday. Both Al-Dimashqi and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said Syrian government’s air force has dropped several barrel bombs on the camp since Sunday.
Islamic State militants stormed the camp Wednesday, marking the extremist group’s deepest foray yet into Damascus. Palestinian officials and Syrian activists said they were working with rivals from the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, the al-Nusra Front. The two groups have fought bloody battles against each other in other parts of Syria, but appear to be cooperating in the attack on Yarmouk.
Nusra said in a statement it is taking a neutral stance in the camp.
Speaking to Ynet, residents of the camp described scenes of beheadings, sniper fire, barrel bombs and street battles as the warring sides fought for control of the camp.
Chris Gunness, a spokesman for UNRWA, the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees, told The Associated Press in Barcelona late Sunday that the agency has not been able to send any food nor any convoys into the camp since the fighting started.
“That means that there is no food, there is no water and there is very little medicine,” he said. “The situation in the camp is beyond inhumane. People are holed up in their houses, there is fighting going on in the streets. There are reports of … bombardments. This has to stop and civilians must be evacuated.”
He said 93 people have been evacuated from the camp so far.
The United Nations says around 18,000 civilians, including a large number of children, are trapped in Yarmouk. The camp has been under government siege for nearly two years, leading to starvation and illnesses.
The camp also has witnessed several rounds of ferocious and deadly fighting between government forces and militants.
Gunness said the camp has been under siege for nearly two years, adding that “things were bad and things got worse when the fighting engulfed the camp.”