President Khoja calls upon the UN and Arab countries to take urgent action to save the residents of Yarmouk from Assad’s barrel bombs and ISIS’s barbarity.
“ISIS militants broke into the camp days ago, killed and arrested several of its inhabitants who have been under siege for over 700 days,” Khoja said. “Despite the crippling siege, regime attempts to storm the camp were met by heroic resistance by our Palestinian-Syrian brothers. However, ISIS’s infiltration of the camp has caused exposure to attacks by regime forces and ISIS.”
Khoja urges rebel factions operating in southern Damascus and its rural areas to help their partners, who are defending the camp against ISIS and regime forces onslaught. He also calls on humanitarian organizations to expeditiously deliver relief aid and medical supplies to the camp and to secure safe corridors for children, women and the elderly to evacuate the ravaged camp.
UNRWA estimates that there are 3,500 children out of 18,000 civilians residing in the Yarmouk Camp, which has been subjected to a suffocating siege by regime forces causing severe shortages of food and medical supplies. As a result, 200 people have died of malnutrition and illness. Population of the camp declined from 160,000 before the outbreak of the revolution to about 18,000 now. (Source: Syrian Coalition)