BEIRUT: The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees yesterday called for the lifting of the Yarmouk camp in Damascus, saying thousands are trapped there and in dire need of aid.
The Syrian army has besieged the Yarmouk Palestinian camp for a year as battles rage inside the sprawling suburb in southern Damascus almost daily between rebels and pro-regime fighters.
The violence has prompted the exodus of tens of thousands of its 170,000 residents, with 20,000 still trapped inside the camp facing hardship and hunger, UNRWA said.
“It has been one year since Yarmouk, the vast suburb of Damascus that was home to the largest Palestine refugee community in Syria, was engulfed by fighting,” said commissioner general Filippo Grandi.
“The situation has progressively deteriorated: 20,000 remaining Palestinians have been trapped inside Yarmouk, and although very alarming reports of hardship and hunger have continued to multiply, since September 2013 we have been unable to enter the area to deliver desperately needed relief supplies,” he said in a statement.
Cleric killed in army shelling
Syrian army shelling of a mosque in the central city of Homs killed a prominent cleric yesterday, while rebels in Aleppo to the north made a fresh advance, a monitoring group said.
“Two people were killed in shelling by regime troops of the Raees mosque in the Waar neighbourhood” of Homs city, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The group’s director Rami Abdel Rahman said one of those killed was Sufwan Mashraqa, a Sunni Muslim cleric who was leading Friday prayers in the mosque.AFP
