Kurdish forces arrest Daesh militants in Syrian camp

JEDDAH: Kurdish forces said on Friday they had captured dozens of Daesh militant extremists in raids on the notorious Al-Hol refugee camp in northeast Syria.

The raids “aim to arrest Daesh operatives in the camp who are behind terrorist attacks,” said Siyemend Ali of the People’s Protection Units, the YPG Kurdish militia. At least 27 militants had been detained, he said.

“Our forces began to dismantle empty tents used by Daesh during attacks and started registering the names of residents ... and collecting their fingerprints,” he said.

Kurdish security forces were heavily deployed in the camp on Friday. They traveled in black armored vehicles and restricted the movements of everyone inside.

Women and children were patted down by security forces who ushered them to special rooms to obtain their fingerprints.

The area is controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, who said Al-Hol was a hotbed for Daesh and their supporters, and fertile ground for the group to gain new recruits.

The latest operation followed earlier campaigns in Al-Hol to flush Daesh fighters out of the camp, the SDF said.

The self-declared Daesh “caliphate,” established in 2014, once stretched across vast parts of Syria and Iraq and administered millions of inhabitants.

A long and deadly military fightback led by Syrian and Iraqi forces with backing from the US and other powers eventually defeated the jihadist proto-state in March 2019.

Al-Hol is the largest camp for dis- placed people who fled after Daesh was dislodged from its last scrap of Syrian territory in 2019 by Kurdish-led forces backed by a US-led coalition.

The camp is still home to more than 56,000 people linked to Daesh, mostly Syrians and Iraqis but also from about 60 other countries, many of them women and children.

It has grown increasingly volatile this year, with at least 26 people murdered, according to the UN.

The Save the Children aid group has warned that an upsurge in violence against women in the camp has made it the most dangerous place in the world for children.

Research by the group found that children were profoundly affected by violence in the camp, and suffered regular nightmares involving violence, insomnia, bed-wetting, vomiting, and loss of appetite.

This led to aggressive behavior and the inability to concentrate in school. Many of them, including very young children, feel hopeless about their future, and one five- year-old child told his parents that he wanted to die.

(With AFP)