UN warns situation in Damascus refugee camp is 'beyond inhumane'

Palestinians refugees in Yarmouk starving and injured as aid is cut off amid intense fighting between Isis extremists and Syrian rebels

Demonstrators outside the Red Cross building in Jerusalem show support for the Palestinians living in Syria’s Yarmouk refugee camp on Monday. Photograph: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images
Kareem Shaheen in Beirut-Monday 6 April 2015

Islamic State (Isis) extremists were trying to consolidate their hold on Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus on Monday after three days of clashes that have seen the terror group make its deepest foray yet into the Syrian capital. 

As fighting raged, the United Nations warned that an already untenable humanitarian situation was now “beyond inhumane” and that no aid had reached already starving residents since the clashes began on Friday. 

The arrival of an estimated 300 Isis members has alarmed Syrian rebels, who are fighting Isis from inside Yarmouk and regime forces bombing it from outside the camp perimeter.

Until Friday, Isis had no known organised presence in the outer suburbs of Damascus. Its sudden appearance threatens the creation of a foothold for Islamic State, whose supporters have framed the surprise offensive as a liberation of the camp’s starving residents. 

Many of the Isis members appear to be Syrian and their entrance to Yarmouk was facilitated by members of al-Qaida-aligned Jabhat al-Nusra, who also have a strong homegrown presence and are thought to have pledged allegiance to Isis. Jabhat al-Nusra says its members remain neutral in the clashes. However, images published on social media on Monday appeared to show the group actively involved in fighting.

Captain Islam Alloush, a spokesman for Jaysh al-Islam, one of the main Islamist opposition groups fighting against Isis in the camp, told the Guardian that 80 Isis militants had been killed in the past two days and some of its positions had been seized. “We can definitely repel the assault,” he said.

Unverified video allegedly shows parts of the Palestinian Yarmouk camp on the outskirts of Damascus following battles between Isis, the Syrian army and the anti-Isis group the Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis.

Jaysh al-Islam holds sway in much of the countryside bordering Damascus and has occasionally shelled the capital city, which is under regime control. The group is one of several power bases in an increasingly complex battlefield around the southern outskirts of Damascus that have been the scene of some of the most savage fighting of the four-year civil war.

Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian camp in Syria, has been a frequent battlezone, pitting regime forces against mainstream and Islamist rebels. Just 16,000 residents remain in the settlement, down from 200,000 before the war. Most inhabitants fled to nearby Lebanon where they now live in overcrowded refugee camps. Many are refugees for the second time, having fled what is now Israel in 1967 or 1948. Some have attempted to flee on migrant boats to Europe and Egypt.

Isis has portrayed its attack as a liberation of the camp’s embattled residents, who have been subjected to prolonged siege and starvation tactics for the past two years. But the United Nations relief and works agency (UNRWA) said: “Never has the hour been more desperate in the Palestine refugee camp of Yarmouk. We demand humanitarian access and the establishment of secure conditions under which we can deliver life-saving humanitarian assistance and that enable civilians to be evacuated.”

Syrian forces control all entrances to the north and east of Yarmouk and have largely resisted pleas by UNRWA for regular food and water parcels to be allowed in.

A video published online and purporting to be of Isis fighters in the camp showed them raiding a warehouse controlled by another militant group Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis. Stocks of food rations had apparently been withheld from starving residents. “We have come for the children of the camp and the women of the camp,” an Isis fighter shouts after uncovering stocks of flour, sugar and olive oil.

In another video, Isis fighters are shown, after apparently clearing a neighbourhood in the camp, chanting: “Patience, lands of the Levant, for after hardship comes ease.”

Photographs published by Isis sympathisers on Twitter purportedly showed camp residents holding the group’s black flag. Bashar al-Assad’s regime has unleashed more than a dozen barrel bomb attacks as well as MiG fighter sorties on Yarmouk since Wednesday, which activists say have killed civilians.

UNRWA said there was no drinking water and food assistance was below the minimum required at the camp, which includes 3,500 children among its residents. Activists said some civilians had managed to flee to other areas in the countryside near Damascus. 

Salim Salamah, the head of the Palestinian League for Human Rights-Syria, and a former Yarmouk resident who fled in October 2012, said the regime’s shelling was the primary reason for civilians remaining trapped. “This use of indiscriminate weapons by the regime is the main reason behind at least 150 injuries remaining now trapped in the camp with no access to medical care or basic first aid,” he said.