The leaders of pro-Iran Palestinian factions close to former ruler Bashar al-Assad have left Syria under pressure from the new authorities, Palestinian sources said Friday, a key US demand for lifting sanctions.

A pro-Iran Palestinian faction leader who left Syria after Assad's December overthrow said on condition of anonymity that "most of the Palestinian factional leadership that received support from Tehran has left Damascus" to countries including Lebanon, while another still based there confirmed the development.

"The factions have fully handed over weapons in their headquarters or with their cadres" to the authorities, who also received "lists of names of faction members possessing individual weapons" and demanded that those arms be handed over, the first added.

A third Palestinian faction source in Damascus said that after Assad's overthrow, "we gathered our members' weapons ourselves and handed them over, but we have kept individual light weapons for protection... with the (authorities') authorisation".

In the Yarmuk Palestinian camp in the Damascus suburbs which was devastated during the war, factional banners usually at the........

© Al Monitor