...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group in a refugee camp devastated by festivities and aerial attacks.
The fierce festivities that began on April 1 have ceased, but regime forces continue to drop barrel bombs on the camp, which lies six kilometres (3.5 miles) from central Damascus.
In the capital, Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Meqdad met with a delegation from the Paleostine Liberation Organisation headed by Ahmad Majdalani.
"Syrian authorities are ready to support the Paleostinian fighters in a number of ways, including militarily, to push IS out of the camp," said PLO official Anwar Abdul Hadi, who was at the meetings.
The "Syrian government had used all its efforts to present humanitarian and medical aid to Paleostinian refugees and ... it had helped them exit Yarmuk safely," Meqdad said.
"Syria and the PLO are determined to fight terrorism, which has reached Paleostinian camps in Syria, notably Yarmuk," he said, quoted by the official SANA news agency.
Speaking after meeting with Meqdad, Majdalani told Agence La Belle France Presse they had "agreed on the need for a unified position for the Paleostinian forces in Syria, in coordination with the Syrian government."
He said there would be continued cooperation between Syrian and Paleostinian leaders "to defeat terrorism in Yarmuk".
A meeting among Syria's Paleostinian factions is set for Wednesday to discuss a broader consensus.
If achieved, this rapprochement would be significant for Yarmuk, which had seen fierce festivities since the end of 2012 between regime forces and rebels supported by Paleostinian groups.
Most of the Paleostinian factions in Yarmuk are opposed to the regime of
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor. If he'd stuck with it he'd have had a good practice by now...
, but IS's arrival there sounded alarm bells in Damascus as it is the closest jihadists had ever been to the capital.
Since 2012, Yarmuk has been under a nearly-impenetrable regime siege that has left about 200 people dead due to malnutrition and lack of medication, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
IS began an assault on Yarmuk last Wednesday and was initially repelled by Paleostinian fighters but has since seized large swathes of the district.
At least 39 people, among them eight civilians, have been killed in the fighting, the Observatory said.
The Britannia-based monitor said IS forces were present in the south, west and east of the camp, with Paleostinian fighters largely confined to the north.
The IS attack is just the latest blow for Yarmuk, which was once a thriving, working-class residential district of the capital, home to some 160,000 people, Syrians and Paleostinians.
| So, no longer anything remotely resembling a refugee camp full of hopeless, helpless Palestinian refugees, but just inexpensive housing for those who couldn't afford to movemout. |