Kurdish forces said Friday they had arrested dozens of suspects at a camp in Syria
housing relatives of Daesh members as part of a crackdown on the extremists.
اضافة اعلان
Al-Hol is the
largest camp for displaced 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.
It is still home to
more than 56,000 people, mostly Syrians and Iraqis but also including other
foreigners linked to the terrorists.
The camp located in
northeastern Syria has grown increasingly volatile this year, with at least 26
people murdered, according to the UN.
The sweep launched
on Thursday “aims to arrest (
Daesh) operatives in the camp who are behind
terrorist attacks”, said Siyemend Ali of the People’s Protection Units, a
Kurdish militia.
So far at least 27
suspects had been detained, he said from Al-Hol.
“Our forces began
to dismantle empty tents used by (Daesh) during attacks and started registering
the names of residents ... and collecting their fingerprints,” said Ali.
Kurdish security
forces were heavily deployed in the camp on Friday, AFP correspondents said.
They mounted black
armored vehicles and restricted the movement of people to carry out the
operation, they added.
Women and children
were patted down by security forces who ushered them to special rooms to get
their fingerprints.
The Kurdish-led
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced the start of the operation to clear
Al-Hol on Thursday.
In a statement, the
SDF called Al-Hol a “hot bed” for Daesh militants and their supporters, arguing
it was a fertile ground for the group to gain new recruits.
The operation
followed earlier campaigns launched in Al-Hol to flush extremist fighters out
of the camp, it added.
Daesh’s
self-declared caliphate, established from 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
extremist proto-state in March 2019.
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