It is believed the inmate was killed in retaliation to a series of air strikes by Syrian and Russian air forces

Pictures released by Isis have revealed the moment that a man was turned into a human bomb by Isis militants.

In their latest execution images they tie the man to planks of wood and secure a device to his helmet.

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The pictures were taken in Yarmouk, an area controlled by Isis and not far from Damascus, and is believed to be in retaliation to airstrikes by Syrian and Russian armed forces.

He was killed instantly in the detonation which caused him to be decapitated. The footage, which we have chosen not to show, was released on Isis websites.

More than three dozen Syrians held for years by al-Qaida-linked insurgents in the country’s northwest were released on Tuesday as part of a deal to hand over areas around Damascus back to the government, state media reported.

The video and pictures show the moment that he was dropped head first to the floor

He was decapitated in the explosion when the detonator on his head went off

The state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV broadcast images of the released, including women and children, arriving by bus at a government-controlled checkpoint, kissing and hugging Syrian soldiers. Many cried as they spoke to the soldiers. The captives had been held by the insurgents since 2015.

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The 42 people freed on Tuesday are the first batch of more than 80 who are to be released.

Along with their release, the deal will see al-Qaida-linked fighters from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group evacuate from a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus, while about 5,000 people in two northwestern villages besieged by insurgents will be allowed to move to government-held areas.

This is the latest in a series of evacuation deals for areas surrounding the capital, Damascus, that came under intense military offensive and crippling sieges. The United Nations and rights groups have criticised the deals, saying they amount to forced displacement.

But the latest deal does not restore full government control over the sprawling Yarmouk camp, where Islamic State militants control small pockets of the camp and a neighbouring quarter and are continuing to clash with Syrian troops.

The attack happened in Yarmouk, close to Damascus (Picture: Reuters)

Islamic State militants control small pockets of the camp and a neighbouring quarter and are continuing to clash with Syrian troops (Picture: Reuters)

Another deal to evacuate three other suburbs south of Damascus is expected to take place in the coming days.

Al-Ikhbariya said nearly 20 wounded or ill from the two besieged villages were evacuated Tuesday. But the evacuation of more than 1,000 residents of the villages of Foua and Kfraya has apparently stalled amid security concerns.

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The residents reportedly are demanding they all leave at once instead of in batches for security reasons, according to the TV and a Facebook page that reports on Foua and Kfraya.

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The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said five buses carrying around 200 insurgents from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham arrived at the handover area south of Aleppo after they left the Yarmouk camp.

The U.N. has warned of ‘catastrophic consequences’ of the fighting affecting remaining inhabitants of Yarmouk. The camp was established in 1957 and has since turned into a densely populated area where nearly 150,000 registered Palestinian refugees lived before Syria’s conflict in 2011.

Many cried as they spoke to the soldiers. The captives had been held by the insurgents since 2015 (Picture: Reuters)

Since the early days of the war, rebel groups seized control of the camp, and the government has fought to restore control, laying a tight siege for years.

The Islamic State militants entered the camp, located about five miles from the centre of Damascus, in 2015, seizing parts of it.

‘Yarmouk and its inhabitants have endured indescribable pain and suffering over years of conflict,’ Pierre Krähenbühl, the chief for the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency, said last week.

The latest fighting displaced around 5,000 civilians from Yarmouk into neighboring area of Yalda, the U.N. said. There are also an unconfirmed number of civilians stranded in Yarmouk.</s>The Syrian government has reached an evacuation deal with fighters from Hay'et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to leave the Yarmouk refugee camp in southern Damascus.

The official SANA news agency announced on Monday that the fighters and their families, numbering about 5,000, would be evacuated in two stages, the first of which would see 1,500 people transported to the rebel-controlled Idlib province in northwestern Syria.

The deal is part of a wider agreement between HTS, formerly al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, and President Bashar al-Assad's government to surrender heavy and medium military hardware.

Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said the rebel group had to concede to government demands of releasing prisoners and allowing thousands of Syrians from the besieged loyalist towns of Kefraya and Foua to head for government-controlled territory.

SANA reported that these include 85 prisoners, "mostly women, children and elderly", from the rebel-controlled town of Eshtabraq.

"Pro-government forces have long wanted to fully evacuate the predominately Shia towns because that would deny the rebels the ability to pressure Damascus by threatening to target them," she said.

Buses to transport the rebels and their relatives have already begun gathering around Yarmouk near midnight, local news media reported.

Khodr said this was the fourth such agreement in recent weeks and constituted another important win for government forces and their allies.

"Rebels have already surrendered Eastern Ghouta, which was their main stronghold close to the capital, and a pocket of territory in the Qalamoun region, northeast of Damascus," she said.

"In a few days, rebel factions linked to the Free Syrian Army are expected to hand over the districts of Babbila, Beit Sahm and Yalda in southern Damascus in order to stave off a military operation".

Nevertheless, this falls short of securing the entirety of southern Damascus, with a few pockets of territory still under control of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.

Government forces have been involved in a two-week-long offensive to recapture the territory, but ISIL units have put up fierce resistance in areas where heavy weapons have proven to be of limited use.</s>An estimated 3,500 Palestinians have fled the embattled Yarmouk refugee camp during a week of violence, according to the UN, as the Syrian government escalates its ongoing military operation in southern Damascus.

Yarmouk, which has been besieged by the Syrian government and opposition groups since 2013, was once home to nearly 200,000 people, mostly Palestinian refugees, Syrians and others.

On April 19, the Syrian government and allied armed groups, including some Palestinian factions, launched a renewed military offensive targeting Yarmouk and surrounding areas citing the presence of fighters.

Among the fighters present in Yarmouk are those from ISIS, and Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra.

As of Friday, at least 31 people had been killed over a week of intensified violence, according to the UK-based Action Group for Palestinians of Syria.

Inside the camp, there are currently no hospitals or medical facilities operating, the Action Group said, adding that up to 60 percent of Yarmouk has been destroyed.

“We are calling on all sides in this conflict to take measures to spare civilians and civilian infrastructure,” UNRWA’s Gunness said.

Gunness further said that armed groups and government forces should respect “international law … at all times”.

Before the war in Syria broke out in March 2011, about 560,000 Palestinian refugees, who were originally displaced from their homeland during Israel’s 1948 establishment, lived in camps, cities and towns across the country.

UNRWA estimates that more than 120,000 Palestinians have been displaced yet again, some of them multiple times.</s>An agreement brokered by Russia to evacuate neighborhoods in southern Damascus was reached Monday between the Syrian government and rebel groups controlling the enclave of southern Damascus.

The parties agreed to evacuate trapped civilians and fighters in southern Damascus in exchange for sending away civilians and fighters in the two towns of Fua'a and Kafriyeh, predominately-Shiite towns under the regime's control in rebel-held Idlib province.

Local sources said the agreement excluded IS militants in Yarmouk Camp.

Mattar Ismael, a journalist based in southern Damascus, told VOA that people started preparations to leave southern Damascus, and the first convoy of civilians is expected to be bused out Tuesday morning.

"The majority of civilians will go to Idlib and Jarablus in northern Syria, a small group chose to go to Deraa in the south, and there are a number of civilians who refused to leave," Ismael said.

He added that thousands of civilians live in areas under the control of Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the towns of Yalda, Babila and Beit Sahm, and about 400 civilians are still in Yarmouk Camp under IS.

The FSA started handing over a number of its locations to the Russian Military Police, according to Syrian opposition news sources.

An estimated 3,500 civilians fled Yarmouk Camp in one week, many of whom are sleeping in the streets of neighboring areas.

"Those stark figures tell their own tragic story, of the destruction of a once-thriving refugee community, now reduced to abject, untold suffering," Chris Gunness, spokesperson for United Nations Agency to help Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), told Al Jazeera.

Yarmouk Camp was established for the Palestinian refugees who fled the 1948 war with Israel. According to UNRWA, the camp was home to about 160,000 Palestinians before Syria's conflict began in 2011.

Monday's agreement will also evacuate 1,500 civilians and militants in the towns of Fua'a and Kafriyeh in Idlib province, and release 80 civilians kidnapped in 2015 by former the al-Qaida-affiliated group, Tahrir.

The towns of Fua'a and Kafriyeh have been under siege since 2015, when rebel groups launched the Operation to Free Idlib Province against the Syrian government.

Despite the agreement, airstrikes and clashes did not stop in southern Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.</s>An evacuation deal has been stuck between the Syrian government and rebels in southern Damascus.

The agreement takes in the Yarmouk Palestinian Refugee Camp - the largest of its kind in the country.

Pro-government forces have surrounded the camp after retaking several neighbourhoods from ISIL and other rebel groups.</s>The group’s propaganda channels published video of the depraved killing which shows jihadis hurling a terrified Syrian headfirst from a building. After hitting the rubble, explosives on the man’s helmet detonate. He was killed instantly in the blast, which decapitated him. The death cult has released countless other sick murder videos, including beheadings and mass executions by firing squad.

This latest brutal killing is said to have taken place in Yarmouk camp, an ISIS-controlled area on the outskirts of Damascus. One image released by the group shows a petrified Syrian Arab Army soldier bound with cables. An ISIS militant can be seen fitting the captured man with a helmet armed with explosives. A second image, taken after the soldier has been hurled from a building, shows the captive hurtling headfirst to the ground.

In one image too gruesome to show, the man's headless body lies motionless on the ground. The execution is believed to be in retaliation for recent airstrikes by Syrian and Russian forces which targeted ISIS-held territory in and around Yarmouk camp. The area has seen heavy fighting since government forces began a campaign to retake rebel-held towns on the outskirts of the Syrian capital. Before the Syrian war broke out in 2011, Yarmouk was home to Syria's largest Palestinian refugee population.

ISIS has been driven out from its so-called "Caliphate" in Syria and Iraq. But the terror group still controls pockets of territory and seized Yarmouk during the height of its power in 2015. The UN has warned around 1,200 civilians are still trapped in the besieged camp and have no access to food or medical supplies. Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner-general of UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, said: "Yarmouk and its inhabitants have endured indescribable pain and suffering over years of conflict. We are deeply concerned about the fate of thousands of civilians, including Palestine refugees, after more than a week of dramatically increased violence.”</s>Soldiers loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad forces are deployed at al-Qadam area near Yarmouk Palestinian camp in Damascus Thomson Reuters By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian troops on Sunday tightened the noose around a major Palestinian refugee camp held by Islamic State militants in southern Damascus where hundreds of civilians face an uncertain future, state media, witnesses and residents said.

Nearly two weeks into a campaign to capture the last area near the capital outside government control that has left many parts of the once teeming Yarmouk camp in ruins, state media announced al Qadm neighborhood next to the camp was retaken.

Opposition sources said the army was now engaged in fierce fighting with militants on the outskirts of Yarmouk camp where an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 militants are now encircled.

The militants who are besieged in an ever shrinking area have repelled successive raids to enter their heavily defended stronghold.

The Yarmouk campaign is part of a wider-Russian backed offensive to regain the last pocket in opposition hands around the capital after retaking eastern Ghouta this month.

It has shown no sign of letting up since Western countries launched air strikes on April 14 to punish the government for a suspected poison gas attack.

The fate of hundreds of Palestinians, mostly sick and elderly women and children still in the camp that was once the largest in Syria is uncertain. UNRWA, the U.N body responsible for Palestinian refugees has called on warring parties to spare civilians.

"There are some families that have been buried under the rubble and no one is able to retrieve their bodies," said Abu Osama, a resident who fled the camp two days ago to nearby Yalda, joining thousands of others seeking relative safety there since the start of the latest offensive.

"The regime is just burning and destroying ... and then trying to advance on several fronts," Rami al Sayed, a former resident of Yarmouk who is now on its outskirts, said.

The camp, which has been under siege by the army since rebels captured it in 2012, was home to some 160,000 Palestinians before the Syrian conflict began in 2011, refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and their descendents.

Amaq, a news agency affiliated to Islamic State, said its fighters had repelled the latest attacks on their positions in al Qadam and Hay al Tadamon, killing at least 17 army fighters killed in sniper attacks.

The ultra-hardline Sunni militants also pushed overnight into some positions in the southern Damascus pocket where mainly mainstream rebels operating under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are in control, opposition sources said.

A deal was reached overnight under Russian auspices to evacuate those FSA rebels who are based in the towns of Yalda, Babila and Beit Sahem that adjoin Islamic State-held areas to opposition held areas in northern Syria, a rebel source said confirming leaks in state media.

Those rebels who have in the past fought both the militants and the Syrian army have also been targeted by the army in an attempt to force them to capitulate.
ISIL releases an execution video showing a prisoner being killed by explosives in Yarmouk Camp, Damascus.