Yarmuk, An Epicentre Of Syria's Bloody Conflict

Poverty and exile, siege and starvation, jihadist rule and government shelling few places have seen more suffering in Syria's seven year, atrocity-filled war than the Palestinian camp of Yarmuk

Beirut, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 21st May, 2018 ) :Poverty and exile, siege and starvation, jihadist rule and government shelling few places have seen more suffering in Syria's seven year, atrocity-filled war than the Palestinian camp of Yarmuk.

A striking 2014 picture of tired, gaunt-looking residents massing among the ruins for a food distribution drew comparisons with a World War II ghetto and became a symbol of the Syrian conflict. The gutted neighbourhood in southern Damascus was the Islamic State group's last urban redoubt until Monday, when the last batch of jihadists evacuated after weeks of fighting.

The area was once Syria's biggest Palestinian refugee camp, home to around 160,000 people. Years of crippling siege and bombardment by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, whose presidential compound is visible from the camp, had already sent tens of thousands of them into a second exile.

Yarmuk is one of the closest spots to central Damascus to have been controlled by IS and the deal brokered in recent days to secure IS's exit handed the government full control of the capital and its outskirts for the first time since 2012.

Government and allied forces turned their attention to Yarmuk and adjacent neighbourhoods in the south of Damascus last month after focusing their efforts on the rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta earlier this year.

Around 1,000 fighters remained in the Yarmuk area at the time, of which at least 233 were killed in this month's fighting, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group. Most of them were former members of Al-Qaeda's Syrian ex-affiliate Al-Nusra Front, but IS fighters there also included Palestinian refugees who joined when the Islamists took over much of the camp in 2015.