SOHR: 6 killed in Al Hol camp since the beginning of the month

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that, six people, including four women, have been killed since the beginning of this month by ISIS operatives inside the Kurdish self-administered Al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria, the Observatory calculated Sunday.The camp contains some 62,000 people, half of them Iraqis, including some 10,000 families of foreign fighters who are in a special section under heavy guard. From time to time, the camp witnessed security incidents involving escapes, attacks against guards, humanitarian workers or murders of its residents.
The Observatory counted the deaths of six people since early December by al-Qaeda’s “sleeper cells”, the last of whom spent Saturday shooting inside the cam.”
The dead were two men and a woman of Iraqi nationality, two displaced Syrians, and another woman, who the Observatory was unable to identify. This brings to 86 the number of people killed inside the camp by members of the group since the beginning of this year, most of them Iraqis.
Observatory director “Rami Abdel Rahman” told AFP that he feared the camp would become a “ticking time bomb as killings and chaos inside the camp increased.” The frequency of murders decreased following a security operation carried out by the Internal Security Forces at the end of March, which resulted in the arrest of more than 100 members of the organization, before rising again.
Since the announcement of the elimination of ISIS in March 2019, the self-administration has been demanding that the countries concerned restore their citizens held in prisons and camps or establish an international tribunal to try jihadists in Syria.
The United Nations has repeatedly warned of a deteriorating security situation in the camp. In a report published last February, the UN Security Council committee working on ISIS and other jihadist groups reported “cases of spreading extremism, training, raising funds and inciting external operations” in the camp.
Experts fear that the camp will be an “incubator” for a new generation of ISIS fighters, amid continuing chaos and violence and a blockage in the diplomatic horizon with the possibility of repatriating residents.

 

 

SOURCE: Xeber24