Daesh seizes 90 percent of Yarmuk refugee camp

The Islamic State militant group (also known as Daesh) has captured most of a large Palestinian refugee camp on the southern outskirts of the Syrian capital after a four-day battle against Palestinian insurgents, a monitoring group said on Saturday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Islamic State extremists were now in control of around 90 per cent of the Yarmuk refugee camp, confining the rival Palestinian faction, Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis (Environs of Jersualem), to the north-eastern part of the site.

The violence, which started on Wednesday inside the camp, left at least nine Palestinians, including civilians, dead, according to the Britain-based Observatory. An unspecified number of jihadists were killed.

The Syrian opposition National Coalition said on Saturday the camp's dwellers were in a dire situation, calling for urgent intervention from the United Nations and the Arab League.

Spokesman for the Western-backed coalition, Salem al-Muslet, accused the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of giving Islamic State fighters access into the camp.

The camp has been under siege by Syrian government troops for more than two years, allegedly for sheltering opposition rebels. 

"The regime must be obliged to open up a safe passage for civilians, who are now caught between (the Islamic State) organization and the regime troops," al-Muslet said.

The fighting at Yarmuk marks the radical militia's deepest push yet into Damascus. 

Yarmuk was home to some 150,000 Palestinian refugees before Syria's 2011 uprising. The figure has dwindled to 18,000, according to the UN refugee agency.

Islamic State rules considerable territory in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.