Militants from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), currently controlling areas of Syria, desecrated the graves of prominent Palestinian Arab figures in the Al-Shuhada Cemetery within the Yarmouk refugee camp, just south of Damascus, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights reported on Monday.
Witnesses said that several tombstones were smashed, including those of Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), a senior Fatah commander and deputy to Yasser Arafat and one of the architects of the First Intifada in the 1980s, and Ahmad Jibril, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC)
On Jibril’s grave, spray-painted graffiti declared: “Curse your soul,” a phrase commonly used by Israeli authorities toward terrorist leaders.
The desecrations sparked outrage among local and PalestinianArab communities, as the targeted figures were both historical symbols of armed resistance, with Jibril having died in Damascus in 2021. He had led the PFLP-GC since its founding in 1968 and remained based in Syria.
The intrusion into their final resting places adds to the tension in Yarmouk, once a densely Palestinian Arab camp before the Syrian civil war and now under shifting rebel control.