Iraq repatriates 580 citizens from Syria’s al-Hol camp
The Islamic State sees the tens of thousands of detainees at al-Hol and other prison facilities in Syria as key to rebuilding its army, US officials have said.
WASHINGTON — Iraqi officials transferred 580 former residents of the al-Hol detention camp in northeast Syria to a rehabilitation camp in northern Iraq on Saturday, the US military said Wednesday, marking the latest step in efforts to repatriate suspected Islamic State (IS) relatives to their home countries.
Some 142 Iraqi families previously held at al-Hol were transferred to the Jeddah-1 rehabilitation camp south of Mosul in the country's Ninevah province, according to US Central Command.
Why it matters: The Biden administration has been quietly pressing other countries to bring back their citizens from al-Hol, which houses some 54,000 suspected relatives of IS fighters in squalid conditions.
Most al-Hol internees surrendered to the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) during the final ground campaign that defeated IS’ so-called caliphate in eastern Syria in the spring of 2019.
