Damascus: A military operation is necessary to expel Daesh militants from the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in south Damascus, Syria’s reconciliation minister said on Wednesday.

“The priority now is to expel and defeat militants and terrorists in the camp. Under the present circumstances, a military solution is necessary,” Minister Ali Haidar said in Damascus.

He made the comments after meeting Palestine Liberation Organisation official Ahmad Majdalani, who travelled from the West Bank for emergency talks on the situation in the embattled Yarmouk camp.

“It is not the state that has chosen this, but those who entered the camp,” added Haidar, referring to fighters from the militant group.

Daesh forces attacked Yarmouk on April 1, and have seized large swathes of the camp, executing Palestinian fighters who sought to resist.

The group’s presence in Yarmouk has sparked international concern for the camp’s remaining residents, who have endured repeated bombardment and a siege of more than 18 months by the army.

The government and residents of the capital have also been rattled by the presence of Deash militants just kilometres from the heart of Damascus.

Haidar did not spell out when a military operation might begin, or how it would be waged, but he suggested that Syrian troops could be involved.

“The Syrian state will decide whether the battle requires it,” he said, when asked if Syrian soldiers would participate in any operation.

On Tuesday, Syria said it was ready to offer Palestinians its firepower to support their battle with Daesh in a refugee camp devastated by clashes and aerial attacks.

The deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Yarmouk camp has pushed the UN Security Council to demand greater access to residents trapped between the encroaching Daesh and besieging government forces.

The fierce clashes that began on April 1 have ceased, but regime forces continue to drop barrel bombs on the camp, which lies six kilometres from central Damascus.

In the capital, Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Meqdad met with a delegation from the Palestine Liberation Organisation headed by Majdalani.

“Syrian authorities are ready to support the Palestinian fighters in a number of ways, including militarily, to push Daesh out of the camp,” said PLO official Anwar Abdul Hadi, who was at the meetings.

The “Syrian government had used all its efforts to present humanitarian and medical aid to Palestinian refugees and ... it had helped them exit Yarmouk safely,” Meqdad said.

“Syria and the PLO are determined to fight terrorism, which has reached Palestinian camps in Syria, notably Yarmouk,” he said, quoted by the official Sana news agency.

Speaking after meeting with Meqdad, Majdalani said they had “agreed on the need for a unified position for the Palestinian forces in Syria, in coordination with the Syrian government.”

He said there would be continued cooperation between Syrian and Palestinian leaders “to defeat terrorism in Yarmouk”.

A meeting among Syria’s Palestinian factions is set for Wednesday to discuss a broader consensus.

If achieved, this rapprochement would be significant for Yarmouk, which had seen fierce clashes since the end of 2012 between regime forces and rebels supported by Palestinian groups.

Most of the Palestinian factions in Yarmouk are opposed to the regime of President Bashar Al Assad, but Daesh’s arrival there sounded alarm bells in Damascus as it is the closest militants had ever been to the capital.

Camp residents described a disastrous humanitarian situation.

“I used to call the camp a big prison ... Now, it’s different, it’s even worse,” Samer said via Skype from inside the camp.

“There was a young man who was killed next to my house by barrel bombs. We picked him up in pieces.”

Most of the camp’s doctors had already fled, leaving only paramedics to care for the wounded.

A sniper shot dead a 12-year-old girl Tuesday on the edge of Yarmouk, another resident said, describing her as a child who “loved singing, music and playing the drums”.

On Monday, the Security Council called “for the protection of civilians in the camp for ensuring humanitarian access to the area,” said Jordan’s ambassador Dina Kawar, the council chair this month.

In a meeting with the council, Pierre Krahenbuhl, who heads the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, described the situation as “more desperate than ever” for the camp’s roughly 18,000 remaining residents.

“What civilians in Yarmouk are most concerned about right now is bare survival,” he said.

Since 2012, Yarmouk has been under a nearly-impenetrable regime siege that has left about 200 people dead due to malnutrition and lack of medication, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Daesh began an assault on Yarmouk last Wednesday and was initially repelled by Palestinian fighters but has since seized large swathes of the district.

At least 39 people, among them eight civilians, have been killed in the fighting, the Observatory said.

The Britain-based monitor said Daesh forces were present in the south, west and east of the camp, with Palestinian fighters largely confined to the north.

The Daesh attack is just the latest blow for Yarmouk, which was once a thriving, working-class residential district of the capital, home to some 160,000 people, Syrians and Palestinians.

In violence elsewhere on Tuesday, two car bombs and heavy clashes erupted in Marea, a strategic city in northern Syria controlled by Islamist groups, including Al Qaida affiliate Al Nusra Front, as Daesh militants sought to expand their reach.

Fifteen people were killed in the twin car bombs but there was no immediate information on the casualties from the fighting, said Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.