ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The notorious al-Hol camp in northeast Syria (Rojava) saw a total of eight murders over the past month, a conflict monitor reported Sunday, adding that security forces also conducted dozens of arrests in the facility.
Al-Hol camp continues to pose a serious security risk and violence in the camp continues to regularly lead to murders, with the camp seeing a total of eight deaths as a result of seven crimes in June, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported.
The murders in the camp are those of four Syrian women, three unidentified women, and one unidentified man.
Internal security forces (Asayish) in the camp also carried out 16 arrests in the squalid camp in June, attempting to assert control over the vicinity of what SOHR describes as a "mini-state" for the Islamic State (ISIS) group. The conflict monitor says "the majority of whom [the arrestees] are women from the families of ISIS members."
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) arrested droves of ISIS fighters and their families when they overran ISIS's last stronghold in Syria in March 2019. Many of these people were taken to al-Hol, which is now home to around 56,000 people - mostly women and children of different nationalities.
Located in Hasaka province, al-Hol has infamously been branded a breeding ground for terrorism, with Kurdish and Iraqi authorities describing the sprawling camp as a "ticking time bomb," saying the situation in the camp is "very dangerous" with ISIS sleeper cells active in the camp.
Iraqi nationals make up the bulk of the camp's population.
A batch of 150 Iraqi families was repatriated from the facility late last month and will be held in Nineveh province's al-Jada camp, despite the country being one of the world's top executioners.
SOHR reiterates its calls for the international community to find a lasting solution for the situation at al-Hol, emphasizing the major security threat "which threatens to explode at any moment at the face of the whole world," further warning about the risk of brainwashing of the "huge number" of children in the camp with the ISIS ideology.
