At least 20 people died yesterday after the Syrian army’s mortar and artillery bombardment of an area of southern Damascus where Palestinian refugees live , residents and local emergency workers said.

Yarmouk camp and the districts surrounding it have seen the most prolonged fighting in the capital since forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad launched a counter-offensive to push rebels out of the city two months ago.

Residents in the camp said that for the past two weeks Yarmouk had been closed off from neighbouring districts and they had heard regular clashes. Since early yesterday they reported heavy bombardment in the area.

They said the army may have intensified its attack in the belief that rebels, who have been sheltering in the nearby neighbourhoods of Tadamon and Hajar al-Aswad, were slipping into Yarmouk, whose Palestinian residents are suspected by authorities of siding with the rebels.

Assad’s forces are trying to re-establish full control in Damascus as well as fighting rebels in the northern city of Aleppo. Persistent air strikes and bombardment of rebel-held areas in northern and southern provinces in the country have prompted waves of refugees to flee to Turkey and Jordan.

In the southern province of Deraa, rebels said 45 army tanks were sent to the border town of Tel Shehab, an anti-Assad stronghold that has served as a transit point for refugees crossing into Jordan.

Sources said rebels withdrew from the town before the army offensive started.

Meanwhile, at least 60 migrants, most of them Palestinian and more than half of them children, died after their overcrowded boat sank just tens of metres off Turkey’s western Aegean coast yesterday, a district official said.

Tahsin Kurtbeyoglu, governor of the coastal district of Menderes in Turkey’s western Izmir province, said an initial investigation showed the small vessel sank due to overcrowding around dawn.

“The latest death toll we haveis 60 people, including 11 men, 18 women and 31 children, including three babies,” Kurtbeyoglu said.

Turkish media said the reason the death toll was so high was because the women and children were in a locked compartment in the lower section of the vessel, although there was no official confirmation of this.

Kurtbeyoglu said 46 people had so far been rescued alive, including the ship’s Turkish captain and assistant, who had been placed under arrest.

He said there were no bodies left on the boat and he did not expect the death toll to rise any further.

Most of the migrants were Palestinian nationals and the authorities were still trying to determine the nationality of the others, Kurtbeyoglu said.

He said the survivors spoke Arabic and were of Middle Eastern origin.

Turkish media said there were also Syrians and Iraqis on the boat, although that could also not be confirmed. Turkey is sheltering about 80,000 Syrian refugees near its southeastern border with Syria, several hundred kilometres away on the other side of the country.

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