Yarmouk Camp, Damascus — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Yarmouk Camp?

Yarmouk Street and Falasteen Street were two of the camp's main roads. Both were lined with shops, and service taxis and microbuses ran through the camp on them. Before the war the BBC described a residential area of beauty salons and internet cafés, with no tents or slums in sight.

The camp had four hospitals and government secondary schools. UNRWA also ran schools. Three UNRWA health centres served the camp, two of them upgraded in 1996 with Canadian funds.

In the 2018 offensive the last working hospital was destroyed.

What is the history of Yarmouk Camp?

Yarmouk was built in 1957 on land of the Shaghour Basatin area, for Palestinian refugees who in 1954 and 1955 had been moved out of mosques, schools and hospitals in Damascus. UNRWA refused to recognise it as a camp in 1960, but road signs into this part of the city read Mukhayyam al-Yarmouk. Before the war it had its own municipality.

Fighting reached the camp in 2012 and a siege followed, and in April 2015 ISIL overran most of it. Government forces retook Yarmouk in May 2018, when only a few hundred people, most of them elderly, were still inside. Palestinians began to return in 2022.

Where is Yarmouk Camp?

Yarmouk Camp covers 2.11 square kilometres, 8 km from the centre of Damascus, with Tadamun to the east, al-Qadam and al-Asali to the west and Hajar al-Aswad to the south.