Looming battle to drive IS from Syrian capital
DAMASCUS, Syria — Syrian troops and allied Palestinian fighters are massing around the last Islamic State bastion in the capital, preparing for an all-out offensive if talks on an evacuation deal fall through.
The extremists seized most of the Yarmouk refugee camp in 2015 after months of heavy fighting. The built-up residential area on the southern edge of Damascus was once home to some 200,000 Palestinians, mainly refugees from the 1948 war with Israel and their descendants — as well as tens of thousands of middle-class Syrians.
Today there are some 2,500 IS fighters in Yarmouk and nearby neighbourhoods, according to Khaled Abdul-Majid, a leader of the government-allied Palestinian Resistance Factions Coalition. He said the battle would begin within days if the militants do not agree to be evacuated.
Yarmouk is one of the last pockets held by IS, after the extremists were driven from nearly all the territory they once controlled in Syria and Iraq. It is also the last part of the capital outside government control, after rebels evacuated the eastern Ghouta suburbs following a fierce government offensive and an alleged poison gas attack.