Published : 08-01-2025
Action Group | Syria
The people of Yarmouk camp remember more than 1,200 Palestinian and Syrian refugees who were subjected to operations that amounted to crimes against humanity at the hands of the forces of the defunct Syrian regime and loyalist groups in the "Ali al-Wahsh" incident south of Damascus 11 years ago, during which hundreds of women and children besieged in Yarmouk camp in Damascus went missing.
The incident began after the regime announced at the beginning of the first month of 2014 the opening of a humanitarian corridor for those besieged in Yarmouk camp and south of Damascus. On the morning of Sunday 1/5/2014, large numbers of besieged residents of Yarmouk camp, Yalda, Beit Sahem, the neighborhoods of Al-Hajar Al-Aswad, Al-Tadamon, Al-Buwaydah and other displaced people flocked to Ali al-Wahsh Street, which connects the towns of Yalda and Hajira.
When hundreds of them arrived at the Ali al-Wahsh checkpoint, which is controlled by the pro-regime Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas group, they received some food from the checkpoint personnel, which encouraged the besieged to flock.
At ten o'clock, the checkpoint personnel began separating the youth from the children, women and elderly.
Then, the regime forces shelled the areas where the besieged were gathered on the street, which led to the killing and wounding of a number of civilians. According to testimonies documented by the action group, the checkpoint personnel forced the civilians to throw their papers and personal IDs into barrels and burn or break them.
They returned the women to Yalda after beating them. More than 1,200 civilians were arrested, including the elderly, children, women and infants, and were placed in warehouses and shops, where dozens were subjected to field executions and rape until the next day of the incident.
According to eyewitnesses, the detainees were transferred to the Maysaloun branch near the Zabadani area in the Damascus countryside and to one of the regime’s branches in Najha in the Damascus countryside, where they were subjected to systematic torture, killing, and medical neglect that claimed the lives of more than 800 detainees, according to documented testimonies confirmed by the Action Group, while the regime released a small number of those who survived arrest and torture.
According to the Action Group’s statistics, the youngest detainee that the group was able to document was the Palestinian child “Maymouna al-Sham Jabr,” who was one year old, and the oldest Palestinian detainee was “Mohammad Kujil,” born in 1939, in addition to a number of other children.
It is noteworthy that the Action Group receives many messages and information about Palestinian detainees, and they are documented successively despite the difficulties of documentation in light of the Syrian regime’s continued concealment of the fate of the detainees, their names, and their places of detention.
The group has so far documented more than 3,000 Palestinian detainees in the Syrian regime’s prisons, including (126) female detainees.
Action Group | Syria
The people of Yarmouk camp remember more than 1,200 Palestinian and Syrian refugees who were subjected to operations that amounted to crimes against humanity at the hands of the forces of the defunct Syrian regime and loyalist groups in the "Ali al-Wahsh" incident south of Damascus 11 years ago, during which hundreds of women and children besieged in Yarmouk camp in Damascus went missing.
The incident began after the regime announced at the beginning of the first month of 2014 the opening of a humanitarian corridor for those besieged in Yarmouk camp and south of Damascus. On the morning of Sunday 1/5/2014, large numbers of besieged residents of Yarmouk camp, Yalda, Beit Sahem, the neighborhoods of Al-Hajar Al-Aswad, Al-Tadamon, Al-Buwaydah and other displaced people flocked to Ali al-Wahsh Street, which connects the towns of Yalda and Hajira.
When hundreds of them arrived at the Ali al-Wahsh checkpoint, which is controlled by the pro-regime Abu al-Fadl al-Abbas group, they received some food from the checkpoint personnel, which encouraged the besieged to flock.
At ten o'clock, the checkpoint personnel began separating the youth from the children, women and elderly.
Then, the regime forces shelled the areas where the besieged were gathered on the street, which led to the killing and wounding of a number of civilians. According to testimonies documented by the action group, the checkpoint personnel forced the civilians to throw their papers and personal IDs into barrels and burn or break them.
They returned the women to Yalda after beating them. More than 1,200 civilians were arrested, including the elderly, children, women and infants, and were placed in warehouses and shops, where dozens were subjected to field executions and rape until the next day of the incident.
According to eyewitnesses, the detainees were transferred to the Maysaloun branch near the Zabadani area in the Damascus countryside and to one of the regime’s branches in Najha in the Damascus countryside, where they were subjected to systematic torture, killing, and medical neglect that claimed the lives of more than 800 detainees, according to documented testimonies confirmed by the Action Group, while the regime released a small number of those who survived arrest and torture.
According to the Action Group’s statistics, the youngest detainee that the group was able to document was the Palestinian child “Maymouna al-Sham Jabr,” who was one year old, and the oldest Palestinian detainee was “Mohammad Kujil,” born in 1939, in addition to a number of other children.
It is noteworthy that the Action Group receives many messages and information about Palestinian detainees, and they are documented successively despite the difficulties of documentation in light of the Syrian regime’s continued concealment of the fate of the detainees, their names, and their places of detention.
The group has so far documented more than 3,000 Palestinian detainees in the Syrian regime’s prisons, including (126) female detainees.
