UN to take over al-Hol camp for IS families in Syria after unrest

The United Nations (UN) says it will take over management of a camp in north-eastern Syria holding holding thousands of people with alleged links to the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).

It comes after Kurdish-led forces that had been running the camp withdrew in the face of an advance by Syrian government forces, triggering unrest that forced aid agencies to suspend operations.

Residents were reported to have rushed camp perimeters in an apparent attempt to escape, prompting unrest and looting.

A ceasefire agreement has brought much of Syria’s north-east under the control of Damascus, ending years of autonomous Kurdish rule.

Briefing the UN Security Council on Thursday, UN official Edem Wosornu said the UN refugee agency UNHCR had “taken over camp management responsibilities” at al-Hol and was working with Syrian authorities to restore humanitarian access. Syrian forces, she said, had established a security perimeter around the camp.

However, UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric cautioned that conditions inside remained “tense and volatile”, with humanitarian operations still suspended following the violence.

Meanwhile, the US has launched a parallel effort to remove high-risk detainees from the region altogether. US Central Command said on Wednesday that it had begun transferring up to 7,000 suspected IS fighters from prisons in northeast Syria to Iraq, confirming that 150 detainees had already been moved to a “secure location” across the border.

Iraqi authorities said all transferred detainees would be prosecuted under Iraqi law.

“This is a measure aimed at protecting regional and international security from an imminent threat. Nevertheless, we stress that this issue should not be left to become a long-term strategic burden on Iraq alone,” Iraq’s deputy UN ambassador, Mohammed Sahib Mejid Marzooq, said.

Syria’s UN ambassador Ibrahim Olabi said the Syrian government welcomed the US operation to transfer IS detainees out of Syrian territory and was ready to offer support.

Rights groups have warned that the transfers could expose detainees to serious abuses.

The Reprieve charity said it believed up to ten British men could be among those transferred, along with juvenile detainees and urged the UK government to intervene urgently. Around 55 to 60 British nationals, most of them children, remain detained across camps and prisons in the region, it said.

“The prisoners transferred face being tortured, sentenced to death and executed, without being granted any meaningful opportunity to contest the allegations against them”, Katherine Cornett, Reprieve’s deputy director told the BBC.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), US and UN have long called for the repatriation of foreign IS suspects and their families from north-eastern Syria, citing the political instability and dire conditions in the prisons and camps, but many countries have refused to take them.