Militants agree to give up last pocket in capital
BEIRUT — Islamic State militants agreed to give up their last pocket in Damascus on Friday, state media reported, as the government seeks to retake the entire Syrian capital and its surrounding areas for the first time since 2011.
The capitulation followed a week of escalations by pro-government forces against the Islamic State-held Hajar al-Aswad neighborhood and Yarmouk Palestinian camp in Damascus.
Pro-government forces bombed the two areas and blanketed them with artillery fire in a crescendo of violence captured by the state-affiliated Central Military Media outlet on Friday.
The United Nations’ refugee agency warned that the spiraling violence was a threat to 12,000 Palestinian refugees still there — Palestinians who came to Syria since 1948, and their descendants.
Militants were given the option to stay and reconcile with the gov ernment or leave on buses to Islamic State-held territory in the eastern Syrian desert, the SANA state news agency said.
The United Nations’ humanitarian arm, OCHA, said more than 55,000 fighters and civilians were bused out of the Damascus region to rebel-held areas in north Syria in recent weeks.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported the militants had accepted the latest deal.
But government air strikes on Yarmouk resumed Friday evening, putting the fate of the agreement in question.
In 2012, Syrian rebels and army defectors pushed pro-government forces out of Yarmouk in response to a spiraling crackdown by state security services against antigovernment protests.
Pro-government forces, including Palestinian factions, responded by putting the camp under siege, eventually cutting off food and water by 2014, and bombing and shelling it continuously.