Killings on the rise in Syria's al-Hol camp
There were far more deaths than usual in the camp for Islamic State families in January amid calls from the United Nations and Kurdish forces for countries to take back their citizens.
There was a deadly uptick in violence in the notorious al-Hol camp in northeast Syria last month.
A total of 20 men and women were killed in the camp for Islamic State (IS) families in January. The killings included deadly shootings of a local official and a policeman, as well as the beheading of an Iraqi man. This constitutes nearly triple the average number of murders in the camp per month, The Associated Press reported on Thursday.
Al-Hol is home to around 62,000 people, mostly women and children. The majority of the camp’s residents are from Syria and neighboring Iraq, but there are also several thousand foreigners from all over the world who came to join IS. Many people there are the wives and children of IS fighters, but allegiance to the group varies among the population. Others are displaced people who were living in IS territory.
The US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) control the camp. The SDF defeated IS territorially in 2019, but IS remains active in Syria.
