With fighting in the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees is over, the Assad regime forces are barring civilians who fled the southern Damascus suburb from returning to their homes under the pretext that the area was not safe. Assad’s militiamen, meanwhile, continue to pillage the district, with activists publishing photos and videos showing Assad militias stealing and looting property of the displaced people.
Local media outlets said that the Assad regime checkpoints positioned in the Yarmouk, Palestine, and Al-Orouba Streets, which is adjacent to Al-Tadamun neighborhood, prevented locals from entering the camp on the pretext that houses were infested with booby-traps.
The Yarmouk camp was the target of a ferocious onslaught by the Assad regime forces which left the district lying in ruins. Syrian and Arab intellectuals earlier said the destruction of the camp only serves the plans of the Israeli occupation.
The French newspaper Le Monde published a report highlighting the situation in the Yarmouk refugee camp and said it had become a graveyard for Palestinian refugees after the regime forces recaptured it from the ISIS extremist group.
The newspaper added that the camp, which was founded in 1957, was home to about 150,000 Palestinian refugees before 2011, of whom only 200 remained. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)