JAKARTA - Syrian security authorities closed the Al-Hol or Al-Hawl Camp, which has long housed relatives of suspected ISIS fighters, after emptying the facility previously controlled by the Kurds, a camp official said on Sunday.
The Al-Hol or Al-Hawl refugee camp located on the southern outskirts of the city of Al-Hawl in northern Syria, near the Syrian-Iraqi border, is known to have housed thousands of refugees, mostly children and women, associated with suspected members of the ISIS group from various countries.
Along with the takeover of the territory by the Syrian Government forces from the Kurdish forces last month, many refugees in Camp Al-Hol fled.
"All Syrian and non-Syrian families have been relocated," Fadi al-Qassem, a government-appointed official to manage Al-Hol affairs, told AFP, quoted from Al Arabiya (23/2).
Al-Hol, located in the desert region of Hasakah province, has become the largest camp in Syria hosting relatives of suspected ISIS fighters.
Last month, the government took over the camp from Kurdish administrators, who had long managed it, as Kurdish forces handed over territory and Damascus expanded its control over much of Syria's northeast.
Since then, thousands of family members of suspected former ISIS members from various countries have gone to unknown destinations.
The facility houses around 24,000 people, mostly Syrians but also Iraqis and more than 6,000 other foreign nationals from around 40 nationalities.
Al-Qassem said security forces were searching for the remaining families inside the tents.
Earlier this week, authorities began evacuating the remaining residents, taking them to a camp in Akhtarin, north of Aleppo province.
Some families were taken elsewhere, al-Qassem said, without specifying their location.
"The residents of the camp are children and women who need support for their reintegration," he added.
A source at the humanitarian organization active in the camp told AFP: "We evacuated all our teams working inside the camp, dismantled all our prefabricated equipment and rooms and moved them out of the camp."
Last week, the US military said it had completed the transfer of thousands of suspected ISIL, including many Syrians but also Westerners, to Iraq, after they had been held in Kurdish-run prisons in northeast Syria for years.
Separately, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday last week that the approximately 5,700 prisoners transferred "risk being subjected to enforced disappearance, unfair trials, torture, ill-treatment, and violations of the right to life."
On the other hand, the Kurds themselves have repeatedly urged countries to take back their citizens, but most have only repatriated a small fraction, fearing security threats and domestic political reactions.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
