Kurdish officials: More than 500 Syrians in the al-Hol camp return to their home
On Monday, Kurdish officials reported that more than 500 Syrians, certain have links with the ISIS group members, left the overcrowded Kurdish-run camp of al-Hol in the northeast of the country.
Furthermore, an AFP reporter witnessed dozens of women carrying their things on trucks while others were feeding their children before their departure. Certain took with them the chickens and sheep, while Kurdish security forces checked their bags when they got out from the camp in Hasakah province.
Fatima (31-years old) was among them; she was happy to be finally going home to the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, after living in a tent with her seven children. Fatima said: We’re so happy to be going back to our houses.
She also related, without giving more details: I’m going back to Sousa (village) to live in my house with my husband living abroad, adding: Our home areas now are stable and safe, and most families in the camp want to return.
Moreover, Sheikhmous Ahmad, a Kurdish official in charge of the region’s camps, stated that 515 people from 120 families were going back to areas in the east of Deir Ezzor province.
In a statement, the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), which is the political wing of the region’s main military force, declared that they had quit. Indeed, they were the first to do that after the Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria promised last month to allow thousands of Syrians, including the families of ISIS fighters, to get out of the over-populated camp.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Al-Hol hosts more than 60,000 people, including 24,300 Syrians either seized or displaced because of the struggle to expel ISIS from their last scrap of Syrian territory over two years ago.
Iraqis constitute the big part of tens of thousands of foreigners in al-Hol that also holds claimed ISIS relatives from around 50 countries, including Western nations. Before the latest declaration, almost 6,000 Syrians had quit the camp in many groups, after that the Arab tribes in their home regions had agreed their departure.
