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, according to Palestinian and UN 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 a long-standing humanitarian nightmare for the 18,000 residents of the Yarmouk refugee camp.
By seizing much of the camp, the Islamic State militant 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 Syrian 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 al-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 on 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.
However, 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 Islamic State militants in the neighboring suburb of Hajar al-Aswad and members of a Hamas-affiliated militia in the camp, Aknaf Bayt al-Maqdis.
However, as the Hamas-linked fighters clashed with the Islamic State and tried to keep it from establishing a foothold in the camp, members of the Nusra Front, an al-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 the Islamic State.
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.”
Despite 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. However, adding an Islamic State occupation onto everything else, one Palestinian resident of Damascus said, “would be catastrophic.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was