:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/grupoclarin/HTXKJLUH6RCTXJ3XQNVGKGRDNM.jpg "Syrians return home after spending years in camp that houses people linked to ISIS")
AL-HOL CAMP, Syria (AP) — Dozens of Syrian women and children linked to the Islamic State group left a camp in northeastern Syria on Wednesday and headed home to the eastern province of Deir el-Zour. after mediation carried out by tribal leaders.
The latest group of people leaving the al-Hol camp, which houses wives, widows, children and other relatives of IS fighters, comes at a time when repatriations by foreign countries have increased in recent years. recent months, in an attempt to reduce the population of the facility, which housed 73,000 people at its peak, reached five years ago.
Beginning in the early hours of the day, 254 people from 69 families piled their belongings into trucks before boarding them and heading south, under the protection of members of the local U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led police force, toward their cities. natives in Deir el-Zour.
This was the 54th group of Syrians to leave the camp in recent years, and the first in 2024, according to Jihan Hanan, director of the camp.
“I feel like I’ve been reborn,” said Anwar al-Hussein, 50, who lived in the camp for more than six years. Standing next to his 7-year-old son, he said that the boy had not gone to school during his stay in the camp and that, hopefully, he will now have a normal life. The man was taken to the camp because he was in the last area controlled by IS, but he proved not to be a member of the extremist group.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring body that opposes the war, indicated that the return of Syrians to their places of origin comes after reaching an agreement between tribal leaders of Deir el-Zour and the authorities led by the Kurds in northeastern Syria.
“We have no desire to keep residents of northeastern Syria in al-Hol,” Hanan said.
He told The Associated Press that the camp’s population is currently about 42,700 people. Of them, more than 18,000 are Iraqis, while those of Syrian origin are more than 16,600.