Northeast Syrian security forces conducted a security raid on Sunday at the notorious al-Hol camp housing many Islamic State (IS) families. There has been an outbreak of violence in the camp this year amid a slow repatriation process for detainees.

Local forces detained nine individuals in the camp, including high-ranking IS leader Abu Saad al-Iraqi. Nongovernmental humanitarian organizations continued providing services throughout the operation with “minimal disruption,” the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said in a statement on Sunday.

Al-Hol houses around 62,000 people with varying degrees of affiliations to IS in northeast Syria near the Iraqi border. Women and children make up the majority of the population. Many are the wives and kids of IS fighters, but others are displaced people who were living in IS territory when the SDF defeated IS. The majority of its inhabitants are Syrians and Iraqis, but there are several thousand foreigners as well from Europe, the former Soviet Union, East Asia and other areas.

The operation was conducted by 5,000 Asayish officers with the help of the SDF. The Kurdish-led SDF is the main military force in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. The Asayish refers to the internal security force in the region, and these two groups control al-Hol along with civilian administration officials. The administration is led by the Kurdish political group the Democratic Union Party, and its territory has a mixed population of Kurds, Arabs, Syriac Christians and others.