Jul 3, 2018

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Pierre Krahenbuhl, on Tuesday visited the Yarmuk camp in southern Damascus that has been pulverised in the Syrian conflict.

"A visit to Yarmuk is a very deeply moving experience. You can't escape a deep sense of shock at the level of destruction," he told reporters after the first visit to the Palestinian refugee camp for several years by a senior UN official.

"The scale of the destruction in Yarmuk compares to very little else that I have seen in many years of humanitarian work in conflict zones," Krahenbuhl said.

"It's clear that for Palestine refugees the big question... is the prospect of return to Yarmuk," added the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Syria's army announced on May 21 that was in full control of Damascus after a month-long assault that ousted the Islamic State jihadist group from Yarmuk and surrounding districts south of the capital.