Fifth batch of Iraqis leaves Al-Hol camp

Within the framework of coordination between the Democratic Autonomous Administration in the North and East of Syria, and the Migration and Displacement Committee in the Iraqi Council of Representatives, a new batch of Iraqi families residing in Al-Hol camp, south of Hasaka city in Al-Jazira canton, was returned today.

The new batch, which is the fifth since the beginning of this year to be returned to Iraq, included 167 families, comprising about 618 people.

The Iraqi refugees are being transferred by the Iraqi authorities to the Jadaa camp in Nineveh Governorate, as this batch is the 22nd of Iraqis who have been returned from Al-Hol camp to Iraq, since 2022.

The camp was originally established to house Iraqi refugees in early 1991 during the Second Gulf War, and was later reopened after the influx of Iraqis into Syria following the invasion of Iraq in 2003, as one of three camps on the Syrian-Iraqi border.

With the start of the Syrian crisis, ISIS mercenaries occupied the camp and used it as a transit point between Syria and Iraq, until it was liberated by the Syrian Democratic Forces in 2016, where the camp then received displaced Syrians fleeing the battles between the regime and militants seeking power.

After the elimination of ISIS mercenaries in their last stronghold in the town of Baghouz in the spring of 2019, Iraqi families and families of ISIS mercenaries moved to it.

Al-Hol camp is considered a time bomb; because it includes thousands of ISIS mercenary women and tens of thousands of their children, which is a ready army that ISIS mercenaries are always trying to reach.

According to the latest statistics from the Al-Hol camp administration, the camp includes 37,363 people from the families of ISIS mercenaries of Syrian, Iraqi and foreign nationalities, including 6,389 foreigners, 15,870 Syrians, and the rest are Iraqis.

Sh-S

ANHA