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stroyed buildings in the Yarmouk refugee area of Damascus, Syria. Photograph:
Youssef Badawi/EPA
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Kareem Shaheen in Beirut
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Friday 10 April 2015 15.15 BSTLast modified on Friday 10 April
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201516.25
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oeKareem Shaheen in Beirut-Friday 10 April 2015
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If they are lucky, Ahmad and his family in the Yarmouk refugee camp will
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have
one meal today: two plates of rice cooked with undrinkable water.
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Others will have to do with less, perhaps a bowl of spiced water that
doubles as a form of soup that will do nothing to ease the all-too-familiar
hunger pangs.
Related: How Yarmouk refugee camp became the worst place in Syria |
Jonathan Steele
We are being killed here, Yarmouk camp is being annihilated, said Ahmad,
a resident of the Palestinian camp just a few miles from the centre of the
Syrian capital who was given a pseudonym to protect his identity.
Yarmouk, once a bustling southern suburb of Damascus of 200,000 people,
has been starved for two years in a relentless siege by Bashar al-Assads
regime, which has also blocked water supplies for months, a tactic that
activists say constitutes the use of water as a tool of war.
Now the remaining 18,000 residents, many of whom suffer from ailments
ranging from malnourishment to liver disease and illnesses linked to
consuming tainted water, are mired on the frontline of the latest offensive
by the terror group Islamic State, which has seized the majority of the
camp.
The situation inside the camp is catastrophic, said Ahmad. There is no
food or electricity or water, Daesh [Arabic acronym for Isis] is killing and
looting the camp, there are clashes, there is shelling. Everyone is shelling
the camp.
As soon as Daesh entered the camp they burned the Palestinian flag and
beheaded civilians, he said.
Activists from the camp say that between 2,000 and 4,000 residents have
fled, seeking refuge in nearby villages such as Yalda, Babila and Beit Sahem
in the Damascus countryside, but those who stayed inside face a grim
future.
Food prices have rocketed, with a loaf of bread costing more than $10
(6.80). Malnourished residents have to walk miles to buy food on the road
to Yalda, whose residents are benefiting from a local ceasefire deal between
the regime and the opposition. But most residents choose instead to remain
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with a placard reading Yarmouk camp ... we need you to stop
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the
ett barrel bombs demonstrate in a refugee camp near Sidon, Lebanon.
Photograph:
Mohammed Zaatari/AP
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After
Daesh entered, the situation worsened because they stole the
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remaining
medical supplies and [there was an] increase in the arbitrary
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bombings with mortars, rockets and barrel bombs, said Sameh Hammam,
the pseudonym of an activist who fled to the camps outskirts in the latest
assault.
There are only two hospitals in the camp, with a tiny number of doctors.
One of them, the Palestine hospital was hit with a regime barrel bomb on
Thursday, activists said.
But beyond the humanitarian crisis, many Palestinians from Yarmouk feel
abandoned by the Arab world and the international community at large,
bridling at the lack of concern for residents who endured two years of siege.