RIYADH: Children at a refugee camp in Syria housing Daesh families threatened to kill a television journalist for being an “infidel.”
Rola Al-Khatib, who works for Al-Hadath and Al-Arabiya Arabic channels, approached the children in Al-Hawl camp in Kurdish controlled north-eastern Syria.
Footage published by Al-Hadath on Saturday showed the children hurling insults at the reporter, calling her an infidel and pelting her and her camera crew with stones.
Al-Khatib, who is Lebanese and based in Dubai, was reporting on conditions in the increasingly lawless camp housing 60,000 people - mostly women and children.
When she saw the children she approached them but they refused to talk with her.
“I’m not carrying a gun or anything, I just want to talk to you, why do you say I’m infidel?” Al-Khatib asked.
“You should wear hijab before we talk to you,” one of them said.
“What you are wearing is not hijab, not this color, it’s not black.”
When she asked them what they would do in this situation when they grow up, they replied immediately: “We will kill you, we have prepared killings for infidels.”
Al-Khatib told the MBC Egypt show Al-Hekaya with Amr Adib that the camp houses children from 60 different countries who are being raised with extremist views.
She said while Daesh may have been defeated militarily in Syria and Iraq, the ideology remains.
Experts have warned that Al-Hawl has become an incubator for extremism.
It is home to mostly foreign families of Daesh fighters who were displaced in the final battles against the group.
Dozens of people have been murdered this year at the camp which is run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
keywords
