As many as 100,000 Palestinians may have fled a Damascus refugee camp after deadly clashes there, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said yesterday.
Around two thirds of residents of Yarmuk camp appeared to have left
“People are still leaving in droves,” UNRWA deputy chief of staff Lisa Gilliam said, adding that the organisation estimated that around two thirds of the some 150,000 residents of Yarmuk camp appeared to have left.
She stressed that the 100,000 figure was only an estimate, adding that the violence in the camp in the south of the Syrian capital was “a humanitarian crisis that is still playing itself out”.
On Sunday, warplanes waged their first air strike on Yarmuk since the start of Syria’s conflict in March 2011, killing at least eight civilians. Both rebels and pro-government fighters have since entered and fierce fighting has rocked the tiny camp.
The fleeing Palestinians were going to other parts of Damascus or further afield in Syria, taking shelter in schools and UNRWA offices, and were also increasingly fleeing across the border to Lebanon, Gilliam said.
“UNRWA and its partners are working around the clock to make sure they are housed and fed, but for the most part, we don’t know where they are,” she told reporters in Geneva. Until this week, around 10,000 Palestinians had fled from Syria to Lebanon, but since the latest violence another 3,000 had crossed the border or were in the process of crossing, she said, adding that another 2,000 were likely to join them in coming days.
Before the Syrian conflict erupted, UNRWA was helping some 530,000 Palestinians in Syria, around 70 per cent of them living in and around Damascus. Meanwhile in the embattled northern city of Aleppo a Syrian merchant in his 40s shot dead his Russian wife because she supported President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the killer’s cousin said.
Clothes shop owner Mohammed on Tuesday evening used a pistol to shoot his wife dead after an argument in their home in the rebel-held district of Maysar in southwestern Aleppo, said Ahmed, a 30-year-old government employee.
“The argument broke out when he criticised Assad, while she defended him,” said Ahmed. “The fight escalated and he shot her.”
Mohammed then went outside and told onlookers that his wife, whom he had met in Russia during a business trip and married four years ago, “would not stop her provocation by expressing support for Bashar, and that he could not take her attitude any longer,” said Ahmed.