ISIL Took Control Over Yarmouk Refugee Camp Outside Damascus

After the Battle for Tikrit, which took a month to come to an end with the victory of the Iraqi troops and the retaking of the town of Tikrit, the fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq an the Levant were pushed outside the area of the town. However, they still have control over the northern Iraqi town of Mosul, the second most important and most populated city in the country, after the capital Baghdad. The Iraqi government has promised that its troops will eliminate the Islamic State from Mosul and from the entire territory of Iraq, but, until then, the Islamic State did not lose time and captured another territory.

In this case, the territory taken by the Islamic State insurgents is a Palestinian refugee camp, located outside the Syrian capital of Damascus. The Yarmouk refugee camp is in proportion of 90 per cent controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and also by the al-Nusra Front, a Syrian terrorist group with connections to al-Qaeda, says a report revealed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Saturday.

Both the Islamic State and the al-Nusra Front have fought side by side to gain control over the Yarmouk refugee camp. They battled Syrian militia and Palestinians, who are opposed to the Syrian government and to Bashar al-Assad, a controversial politician who functions as the president of Syria. Other rebels were involve in the fight but they could not change the final verdict: the Islamic State and the al-Nusra Front have captured the Yarmouk refugee camp.

Officials representing the United Nations stated that the battles were not just traditional shooting on the ground. It seems that the Islamic State attacked the camp using bomb shells. In the confrontations that occurred over the last week, 18.000 civilians, with a large number of children among them, were inside the Yarmouk refugee camp.

The offensive led by the Islamic State is very significant from the strategy`s point of view, letting alone the horrifying and tragic aspect of war itself. The Yarmouk refugee camp is located just outside Damascus, the capital of Syria. The newest `acquisition` of the Islamic State means that they are just a few miles from Bashar al-Assad`s seat.