Family die in Assad regime strike on refugee camp

A family of three was killed late on Saturday in government strikes in Syria’s southern district as dozens of bodies were found in a mass grave in the former ISIS stronghold of Raqqa.

Forces loyal to President Bashar Al Assad are pounding the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Damascus, and nearby districts that are held by ISIS.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitor group based in Britain, said yesterday that a man, his wife and their child were killed in the shelling of Yarmouk.

“This brings to nine the number of civilians killed since the shelling escalated on Thursday,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Mr Abdel Rahman said that the bombing and clashes continued into yesterday with air strikes, artillery and surface-to-surface missiles hitting the neighbourhood.

Yarmouk was once a densely populated and thriving district of the capital but it has been ravaged by violence since Syria’s conflict broke out in 2011.

The Assad regime imposed a crippling siege on the camp in 2012, and fighting among rebels and rival groups has exhausted residents.

In 2015, ISIS overran most of Yarmouk, and the small numbers of other rebels and extremists, including from Al Qaeda’s former affiliate, that had a presence there agreed to withdraw just a few weeks ago.

Meanwhile, nearly 50 bodies were recovered from a mass grave in Raqqa, the former “capital” of ISIS in northern Syria, a local official said.

The militants were removed by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in October last year.

The mass grave was found under a football pitch, close to a hospital where ISIS fighters had dug in before being chased out of the city.

“It was apparently the only place available for burials, which were done in haste,” the official said.

He said that some bodies were marked with the battle names of the extremists while civilians just had first names.

Syria and Iraq have in recent months discovered mass graves in areas previously occupied by ISIS.

Syrian troops uncovered a mass grave containing the remains of more than 30 people killed by ISIS in Raqqa province in February. It followed two other finds by the army.

ISIS, which proclaimed a “caliphate” over large areas of Syria and Iraq in 2014, has now lost almost all of the land it once controlled.

It has been held responsible for atrocities during its reign of terror, including mass executions and beheadings.