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Photo: AFP
Destroyed building in Yarmouk
Photo: AFP

Palestinian envoy: 'Military' option agreed for Syrian camp

Official says agreement reached to use military force to expel Islamic State militants from Yarmouk refugee camp, as Red Cross demands access.

A Palestinian official said Thursday that an agreement had been reached with the Syrian government to use military force to expel Islamic State militants from an embattled Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus.

 

 

Palestinian Labor Minister Ahmad Majdalani told the Voice of Palestine Radio that "we have agreed with the Syrian government on ways to force the terrorist group IS out of the Yarmouk refugee camp."

 

Islamic State militants in Yarmouk
Islamic State militants in Yarmouk

 

He said "the military solution is the only one to force these terrorists out" of Yarmouk, which IS militants largely overran last week.

 

Majdalani is leading a West Bank delegation to Damascus to address the Yarmouk crisis.

 

Majdalani also said  the Syrian government has agreed to ensure safe passage to refugees in Yarmouk and to provide them with shelter outside the camp.

 

Also on Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross called on  for immediate access to the camp. 

 

The independent aid agency said that emergency medical care was urgently needed at Yarmouk camp, which lies on the outskirts of Damascus. The ICRC has not had access to Yarmouk since October 2014.

 

Rubble in the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus (Photo: AFP) (Photo: AFP)
Rubble in the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus (Photo: AFP)

 

"The ICRC is calling on all involved in fighting to allow the immediate and unimpeded passage of urgent humanitarian aid and to permit civilians who wish to leave the camp for safer areas to be able to do so at any time," it said in a statement.

 

Marianne Gasser, head of the ICRC delegation in Syria, said: "People were already worn down by months of conflict and constant shortages of food, water and medicine and they need urgent help."

 

Islamic State has taken most of Yarmouk from rival groups while the Syrian army surrounds the district, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Islamic State rules swathes of Syria and Iraq and is the target of US-led air strikes.

Some families have managed to escape from Yarmouk to the nearby district of Yelda, the ICRC said. Along with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent it has delivered 9,500 food parcels to people in Yelda.

 

United Nations officials warned on Wednesday of a potential "slaughter of innocents" unless aid and assistance reached the camp.

 

"The level of inhumanity that Yarmouk has descended to is frankly unimaginable," Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a Skype interview from Jerusalem.

 

"The situation is absolutely desperate. We need urgently to have humanitarian access, which is why UNRWA is calling for all parties to exercise influence with their clients on the ground so that we can get into the camp."

 

"When you have public health system completely shot to pieces, when you have such terrible levels of food insecurity ... disease is going to soar," said Gunness.

 


פרסום ראשון: 04.09.15, 12:49
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