Feature: IS scary tactics push afflicted people to flee Yarmouk Camp

"They are a really scary group. Who doesn't fear being slaughtered by their hands?" said Muhammad al-Halabi, who fled the Yarmouk Camp for Palestinian refugees when the Islamic State (IS) group swept in last week.

A week has passed since the IS stormed Yarmouk in the southern part of the capital Damascus. At the outskirts of that area, once bustling with life, the destruction has removed every feature of that area, making it like any other war-ravaged area in Syria.

As many as 2,000 Palestinians and Syrians fled the camp to nearby areas over the past week. Those people were hanging on over the past two years, saying they wouldn't leave their homes even though other jihadist groups have for long seized control of their camp.

Still, the IS presence in the camp was different. 21 civilians in the Yarmouk were killed and over 80 others were kidnapped in the first few days following the terrorist group's invasion of the camp.

The Aknaf Beit al-Maqdes rebels, a group of Palestinian fighters who sided with the rebellion in Syria, fought intense battles to thwart the IS on the attack. But the IS beheaded 25 of them and hang some of their heads on fences.

Muhammad al-Halabi, one of the people who fled the camp to a nearby displacement center, said the IS militants threatened the people to either surrender or get killed.

"They are a really fearsome group. Who doesn't fear being slaughtered by their hands?" he said.

The 60-year-old man said the civilians in the camp fled with the help of local militias who "told us to leave because they were going to engage in battles with the IS. They told us that we would be an obstacle in their way."

Around 13,000 people are still trapped in the camp, with nothing to hold on to. No water, no electricity and on top of that the fear of the IS has added to their misery.

Jamil, 20, said he and his family cowered in their home for 12 hours, not daring to open the door once they heard the IS was near.

"I was staying at home with my family when we heard that the Islamic State group is only one block away. We felt really afraid and didn't even dare to leave the home. We stayed hiding in our home from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m.. Afterwards, the neighbors opened a hole from our building to the back street, from which we fled."

The IS group and al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front have taken control of more than 90 percent of the Palestinian refugee camp, reports said.

The capture of the Yarmouk Camp by the Nusra and the IS groups came after four days of intense battles with the rival jihadist group, Aknaf Beit al-Maqdes, which has been in control of the camp since 2013.

The Aknaf group has retreated to the northeastern part of Yarmouk, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Meanwhile, Syria's official news agency SANA said the Syrian government forces have for long besieged the camp since the Aknaf militants took control over it over two years ago, adding that the clashes are ongoing inside Yarmouk between the extremist groups.

The Syrian government brands the Aknaf group as a "terrorist militant organization" after the group refused several reconciliation attempts that were designed to disarm the militants inside the camp and alleviate the suffering of the trapped people inside.

The Yarmouk Camp is a large district in southern Damascus. Among its one million residents, 170,000 are Palestinians. Most of them fleed to Syria in 1948 following the establishment of the Israeli state. Endit