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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) conducted a large-scale operation in al-Hol camp early on Sunday morning targeting Islamic State (ISIS) sleeper cells, according to a monitor and an SDF-affiliated news agency.
“The operation, in which several thousand security forces took part, aims at dislodging ISIS' stronghold in the camp, amidst rising sleeper cell assassinations,” the Rojava Information Center (RIC) said on Sunday.
The SDF-affiliated Hawar News Agency (ANHA) reported that “6,000 members of the Internal Security Forces, along with the SDF and the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), participated in the security operation inside the camp.”
Al-Hol camp in northeast Syria (Rojava) is home to around 61,000 people, mostly women and children linked to ISIS militants. Conditions in the camp have previously been condemned by Human Rights Watch (HRW) as “filthy and often inhuman.” Almost 40,000 foreign nationals live in al-Hol.
Human rights organizations have condemned the lengthy detention of suspected ISIS members, calling for them to be tried.
“The foreign detainees have never been brought before a court, making their detention arbitrary as well as indefinite,” reads an HRW statement released on Tuesday.
Fifteen people have been killed in al-Hol camp since the beginning of March, the SDF said on Wednesday. Twenty people were murdered at the camp in January, and 10 in February, the RIC told Rudaw English on Monday.
The SDF had already arrested a number of suspected ISIS sleeper cell members in the camp over the murders.
With Iraqis making up a large number of the foreign detainees at the camp, a senior Iraqi security official warned earlier this month of what might happen if children are left there.
"The continuation of al-Hol camp the way it is makes it a time bomb, especially with the presence of 20,000 Iraqi children – children and adolescents – in the camp that will all eventually become ISIS militia members," Iraq’s national security advisor Qasim al-Araji said in a meeting with the US ambassador to Iraq.
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