Daesh militants have largely exited the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, on the outskirts of Syria's capital Damascus, after skirmishes also pushed out their main rival in the area, a Palestinian official and camp residents told Reuters on Wednesday.
On the other side of the battle in Yarmouk is the Hamas-linked Aknaf al-Maqdis, a Palestinian rebel group who was making significant gains toward Damascus when Daesh first entered the camp earlier this month. In addition to gaining control of the camp itself, the militants sought to defeat the ideologically-opposed Palestinian rebels.
After two weeks of heavy fighting, residents say the group has largely vacated the territory as well, leaving only a few fighters engaged in smaller clashes with Daesh affiliates at Yarmouk's northern entrance.
Meanwhile, al-Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front has stepped in to fill the power vacuum, according to residents and the Palestinian Liberation Organization's Damascus envoy, who said the group had become the strongest in the camp since Daesh's retreat.
Rivals of the al-Qaeda group accused them of allowing the entrance of Daesh fighters to defeat the Palestinian rebel group, who is a sworn enemy of both extremist groups. Where they differ across the rest of Syria, Nusra and Daesh found a common enemy in Yarmouk.
But residents said Nusra did not engage in the last battle that drove Daesh and most of Aknaf al-Maqdis from the camp, instead staying back and avoiding armed confrontation with their rivals.
The Yarmouk camp has come under international attention in the last two weeks following Daesh's push into its territory, where the UN and Palestinian organizations have warned of civilians being wedged between deadly air attacks by the Syrian government and brutal street fighting by Daesh and its rivals.
Now largely emptied out of many of its residents, the camp was once home to some 160,000 Palestinians, the original of whom arrived in Syria following Israel's founding conflict in 1948 and began families.
