DAMASCUS: Jihadis from ISIS have lost ground to Palestinian fighters in Syria’s Yarmouk camp, Palestinian officials and a resident said Tuesday.

ISIS fighters have retreated from much of the territory they seized in the camp in southern Damascus after entering it on April 1, a resident using the pseudonym Samer told AFP.

“We haven’t even seen any Daesh members in over three days,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.

The withdrawal was confirmed by an official from a pro-Syrian regime Palestinian faction fighting against ISIS inside the camp.

“There are intermittent but ongoing clashes between Palestinian factions and ISIS,” said Khaled Abdel-Majid, head of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, adding that ISIS had quit most of the neighborhoods it previously controlled.

ISIS fighters were now confined largely to the southwest of the camp, with Palestinian factions – both pro- and anti-Syrian regime – controlling most of the east and north of the camp, Palestinian sources said.

Syrian regime forces are stationed outside the camp and have maintained a tight siege around it, but Abdel-Majid said the Palestinian factions had established a “joint operations room” with government forces.

A Syrian security source in Damascus also said “the Palestinian factions have made progress and were able to recapture key points … and the operation is ongoing.”

The Palestinian forces inside the camp include the Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis group that is opposed to the regime and has fought alongside Syrian rebels.

Fighters from the Palestinian Fatah and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine groups are not participating, Palestinian officials said.

Both groups have said they want Yarmouk to remain neutral and do not want to be seen as taking a side in the conflict between Syria’s government and opposition forces.

ISIS’ advance rattled residents and the Syrian government, with the country’s reconciliation minister saying a military operation would be necessary to expel the jihadis.

The extremist group’s entrance into Yarmouk plunged the district into further hardship, exacerbating already-dire conditions caused by a government siege lasting more than 18 months.

Once home to some 160,000 Palestinian and some Syrian residents, Yarmouk’s population had shrunk to just 18,000 by the time ISIS entered the camp.

According to Palestinian sources, some 2,500 civilians have managed to escape the camp, but aid agencies and the United Nations have warned of a serious humanitarian crisis and urged all parties to allow the creation of a humanitarian corridor.

In Aleppo, the Nusra Front and other Islamic battalions retreated from a school in the Jam’ia al-Zahraa neighborhood, after taking control of it Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-regime monitoring group, reported.

Clashes in the area killed 20 regime soldiers and 13 rebels, the Observatory added.

Barrel bombs were dropped by the regime elsewhere in Aleppoprovince, killing at least two, and injuring others, it also reported.

Also Tuesday, Human Rights Watch said eyewitness accounts and evidence collected from northwestern Syria “strongly” suggest regime forces dropped toxic chemicals on civilians several times last month.

A high-ranking Syrian security official denied the claim, saying the accusations were “lies the insurgents say when they incur losses.”

Human Rights Watch said the chemicals appeared to have been packed into crude explosives-filled barrels that were dropped by military helicopter on rebel-held areas during heavy fighting for the city of Idlib.

“Evidence strongly suggests that Syrian government forces used toxic chemicals in several barrel bomb attacks in Idlib governorate between March 16 and 31, 2015,” the New York-based group said.

It called on the U.N. Security Council to investigate what would be a breach of both its own resolutions and Damascus’s obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

HRW said it had investigated six reported attacks in Idlib and villages outside, collecting evidence from rescue workers and other civilians that provided a compelling case in three of them. The most conclusive evidence came from a March 16 attack on the village of Sarmeen, which left a family of six, including three children, dead, and an attack on Idlib city on March 31.

“The children were foaming at the mouth, they were suffocating, then their hearts stopped,” said Leith Fares, a rescue worker in Sarmeen.

HRW said that it could not conclusively establish the chemical used although volunteers from the Syrian Civil Defense said they found remnants of barrel bombs at attack sites and smelled chlorine gas on victims’ clothes.

The Syrian security official told AFP these were “lies” that armed rebels spread to “explain their failures to their funders.”

“If the army used chemical weapons or chlorine gas every time they say it did, those people would have been completely wiped out by now,” he said.

The world’s chemical weapons watchdog already expressed “serious concern” on March 25 regarding the reported use of toxic agents in Idlib province.

In January, it reported the use of chlorine gas in three attacks on three Syrian villages last year.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons did not attribute responsibility for those attacks, although its report cited witnesses saying they heard helicopters, which only the regime possesses.

 

 

https://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2015/Apr-15/294459-palestinian-fighters-push-back-isis-in-yarmouk-camp.ashx