DAMASCUS(RAHNUMA): Syria began evacuating remaining residents of Al-Hol camp, which long housed relatives of suspected Daesh group fighters, as it empties the formerly Kurdish-controlled facility, two officials told AFP.
Al-Hol, located in a desert region of Hasakah province, had been Syria’s largest camp housing relatives of suspected Daesh fighters.
Last month, the government took over the camp from its Kurdish administrators, who had long run it, as Kurdish forces ceded territory and Damascus extended its control across swathes of Syria’s northeast.
Since then, thousands of family members of foreign militants have left the camp for unknown destinations.
The facility had housed some 24,000 people, mostly Syrians but also Iraqis and more than 6,000 other foreigners of around 40 nationalities.
Fadi Al-Qassem, the official appointed by the government to manage Al-Hol’s affairs, told AFP that “we carried out an evaluation of the camp’s needs and found the camp lacks the basic conditions for habitation, so we made an urgent decision” to move residents to camps in Aleppo province.
Al-Hol camp “will be fully evacuated within a week, and nobody will remain,” he said, adding that “the evacuation started today.”
A government source told AFP on condition of anonymity that “the emergencies and disaster management ministry is working now to evacuate Al-Hol camp” and take residents to a camp in Akhtarin, in the north of Aleppo province.
Vehicles carrying camp residents have already departed for Aleppo province, the source added.
– ‘Significant decrease’ –
Last week, humanitarian sources told AFP that most foreign families had left the Al-Hol camp since the departure of Kurdish forces who previously guarded it, and that the overall camp population had plummeted.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on January 20 that they had been forced to withdraw from Al-Hol, while the army, which entered the camp the following day, accused them of abandoning the site.
Foreign women and children, including many from Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, had lived in the high-security section of the camp, separate from Syrians and Iraqis.
On Monday, the United Nations refugee agency’s spokesperson in Syria, Celine Schmitt, told AFP that “UNHCR has observed a significant decrease in the number of residents in Al-Hol camp in recent weeks.”
“The government has informed UNHCR and partners of its plan to relocate the relatively small remaining caseload in the coming days to Akhtarin camp… and has requested our support to assist the population there,” she said.
“It remains important that the government is able to identify the foreign nationals who have left (Al-Hol) so that appropriate repatriation processes can be pursued,” she added.
Kurdish forces still control the Roj camp in Syria’s northeast, where more relatives of foreign militants are detained and which houses some 2,200 people from around 50 nationalities.
On Monday, Kurdish authorities released 34 Australians from Roj, but they had to return due to coordination issues with Damascus, according to Kurdish officials, while Australia has refused to help them.
Last week, the US military said it had completed the transfer of thousands of Daesh suspects, including many Syrians but also Westerners, to Iraq, after they were held in Kurdish-run prisons in northeast Syria for years.
Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that the roughly 5,700 transferred detainees “are at risk of enforced disappearance, unfair trials, torture, ill-treatment, and violations of the right to life.”
The Kurds had repeatedly urged countries to take back their citizens but most only repatriated a trickle.
