ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Another Iraqi refugee was shot dead in Syria’s al-Hol camp amid a resurgence of crimes in the camp, a UK-based watchdog reported on Friday.
The murder is the 20th of its kind since the end of the first phase of the security operation in al-Hol in March, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.
Four Iraqi refugees, including two females, were gunned down in the camp in July, it added.
Al-Hol is home to nearly 60,000 people, mostly women and children with suspected links to the Islamic State (ISIS). The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Internal security forces (Asayish) launched a five-day operation in the camp in late March targeting ISIS sleeper cells, arresting 125 ISIS people.
ISIS-related violence at the camp decreased following the operation, the Pentagon said in a report issued on Tuesday. It followed a spate of murders earlier in the year, mostly involving Iraqis.
However, the US Central Command said that ISIS has retained a “strong” presence in the camp, noting a concerning increase in violence during June. The report also warned against the group’s continuous practice of targeting the “most susceptible for recruitment” particularly in the camps.
“ISIS has given priority to smuggling boys out of these camps to training locations in the Syrian Desert,” it said. The group also continues to raise funds through extortion of oil smuggling networks in eastern Syria, collecting kidnapping ransoms, looting, and possibly the operation of front companies in both Iraq and Syria.
Al-Hol has been branded a breeding ground for terrorism. Conditions at the camp have been described as “filthy and inhumane.” The President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Peter Maurer described the camp as “the place where hope is going to die” in a visit to the camp in late March.
There have been calls on foreign countries and Iraq to repatriate their nationals held in the camp.
The Iraqi government repatriated 93 Iraqi families from al-Hol in May. Iraq has agreed to take in 500 families in a phased operation.
Russia, Kosovo, Canada, and Albania also recently repatriated a number of their nationals.
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