Report: Most of the families of foreign ISIS operatives have left the al Hol camp in Syria

Most of the families of foreign Islamic State fighters have left al Hol camp in eastern Syria after the Kurdish forces that were running it withdrew, humanitarian sources and witnesses told AFP on Thursday.

The camp housed about 24,000 people, including nearly 15,000 Syrians and about 6,300 foreign women and children of 42 nationalities, most of whom countries refuse to repatriate.

The foreigners’ section was almost empty after Kurdish forces withdrew from the camp in late January and was handed over by Syrian security forces, who were deployed in large areas of the north and east of the country that were under Kurdish control, before reaching an agreement between the two sides that stipulates a gradual integration of military and administrative forces between them in Hasakeh province, a humanitarian source said.

Another humanitarian source said that since last Saturday, there are only 20 families left in the migrant section, as the section for foreigners that was fortified and housed a large number of women and children from Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

“A large part of them were smuggled to Idlib and other provinces, and a few entered the private sectors of Syrians in the camp,” the source said.

“It’s clear that many people, including foreigners, have left the camp, but there are no official statistics yet.

According to sources and witnesses, part of the camp’s residents, including more than 15,000 Syrians and Iraqis, numbering more than 2,200, were also evacuated.

In Idlib, that was a stronghold of opposition and Islamist factions during the conflict in Syria and launched the process that led to the ouster of Bashar al Assad at the end of 2024.

A source in the Syrian Interior Ministry’s camp administration confirmed that authorities were still counting the number of residents, without confirming that anyone had fled the camp.

“The reason for all this, if any, (referring to the possibility of residents fleeing the camp) is borne by the SDF forces that withdrew from the area,” he said, before the handover could take place.

A humanitarian organization working in the camp told AFP that the number of its residents has decreased significantly and that it hasn’t been able to resume operations there due to the departure of people and because “our centers have been damaged and looted,” also citing the instability of the security situation.

An eyewitness in the camp said he saw gunmen removing veiled women shortly after Kurdish forces left and government forces took control of the camp.

In Iraq, an Iraqi security source said Baghdad had planned to evacuate the last batch of its citizens from al Hol camp this month, but the operation was delayed as government forces advanced into the area in January and took over the camp.

Iraq is coordinating with the Washington-led international coalition to evacuate a final batch of 300 to 350 Iraqi families, according to the same source, without clarifying whether other families will remain in the camp.

Soon after the group took control of large swathes of Syria and neighboring Iraq, the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), of which Kurdish forces are the largest component, spearheaded its fight with the support of the United States, and subsequently established autonomous administration in large areas in the north and northeast of the country.

But the Kurds have lost control after bloody clashes with government forces as authorities seek to unify all of the country’s territory under their banner, leading to an agreement that stipulated a gradual integration of military and administrative forces between the two sides in Hasakeh province in January.

The United States subsequently announced the start of the transfer of thousands of ISIS prisoners from Syria to Iraq, after they were held in prisons run by the Syria Democratic Forces.

The US army has transferred 5,046 detained Islamic State fighters from Syria to Iraq in the past three weeks, most of them Syrians, as well as hundreds of foreigners, an Iraqi security official told AFP on Wednesday.

The SDF still controls the Roj camp, which is also home to the families of 2,328 mostly foreigners, near the border with Türkiye.

The Syrian Ministry of Defense announced Thursday that the Syrian army had taken over al Tanf base, located on the border between Jordan, Iraq and Syria, after the withdrawal of US forces that were deployed there as part of the international coalition against the Islamic State.

Two Syrian military sources told AFP on Wednesday night that US forces had withdrawn from the base towards Jordan.