Residents resemble ghosts in cut-off camp
Civilians are starving to death in a Damascus suburb that has been cut off by fighting since July, a United Nations official said yesterday after a rare visit to the Yarmouk camp.
Filippo Grandi, the chief of the UN relief agency for Palestine refugees, said residents resembled ghosts, and more than a hundred had died of hunger. ‘‘The devastation is unbelievable,’’ he said.
‘‘There is not one single building I have seen that is not an empty shell by now.’’
Christopher Gunness, of the UN Relief and Works Agency, described ‘‘row upon row of gaunt faces, serried ranks of grimy, ragged figures; the delicate, hunger-ravaged features of children waiting in line for a food parcel; the face of a mother creased in grief for a deceased child; tears of joy as a father is reunited with a daughter’’. The Yarmouk Palestinian camp has been a battleground between rebel factions in Syria’s complex civil war, including two that claim allegiance to al Qaeda. The leader of al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria gave rivals in a breakaway group a five-day ultimatum to end infighting or face expulsion from the region. Abu Mohammed al- olani, leader of the Nusra Front, issued the ultimatum to the Islamic State of Iraq and alSham (ISIS), disowned by al Qaeda central command last month.
Tensions between ISIS, the former al Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, and other Islamist rebels, including the Nusra Front, erupted two months ago. More than 2000 people have died as a result of rebel infighting – which has distracted from the larger battle to topple the Assad regime, and allowed government troops to retake hard-won rebel-held territory.
In an audio recording posted on militant websites, al Golani told ISIS they had five days to agree to mediation by senior al Qaeda clerics to stop the infighting. If ISIS did not agree, or refused to accept the clerics’ judgment, he said, the group would be driven from Syria and Iraq, where it originated and where it continues to wage a campaign of suicide bombings against the Government and Shia civilians.
‘‘We are waiting for your official answer within five days of issuing this statement,’’ al-Golani warned. The ultimatum came two days after the killing of Abu Khaled al-Suri, al Qaeda’s most senior emissary in Syria, by suicide attackers believed to have been sent by ISIS. The Nusra Front’s battle to drive out ISIS is part of an effort by the group to ingratiate itself with Syrians suffering in the conflict.
Filippo Grandi, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency, says dozens of people have starved to death in the Yarmouk Palestinian camp in Damascus.