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Παρασκευή, 29 Μαρτίου, 2024

Two Egyptian girls reported dead at Syria’s al-Hol detention camp

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Two Egyptian girls were found dead in northeastern Syria’s al-Hol camp, which holds relatives of suspected Islamic State fighters in northeastern Syria, according to a major children’s charity that works in the camp.

Save the Children did not identify the cause of death of the two girls, whose ages it gave as 12 and 15. But the Associated Press, citing the London-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and unnamed officials with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, reported that both girls had been beheaded and their bodies dumped in the sewage system. The Washington Post was unable independently to verify the reports and has contacted the SDF for comment.

“This news is utterly heartbreaking. These two girls were trapped in the Al Hol camp through no fault of their own,” Save the Children’s interim Syria response director, Beat Rohr, said in a statement Tuesday. “Their death is a stark reminder that no child should grow up in these camps. We continue to urge all countries to repatriate children stuck in North East Syria as soon as possible.”

After years in ISIS prison camp, they now face an uncertain welcome home

Doctors Without Borders, which runs medical facilities at al-Hol camp, reported this month that the facility houses more than 50,000 people, more than half of whom are children. Detainees from Syria and Iraq are housed together, and other foreign nationals, numbering about 11,000, are housed separately, the group said.

Almost 80 children died in al-Hol last year, many of them victims of accidents, Doctors Without Borders said. The camp also has been the scene of growing violence in recent months, with 34 suspected murders reported there between January and August this year, the group said. In February this year, one child was killed and three injured in a shooting by Syrian Kurdish police forces in the section holding foreign nationals, Amnesty International reported.

“People in the camp are exposed to high levels of violence, exploitation and abuse on a daily basis, while children and other vulnerable groups bear the brunt of the insecurity and deprivation,” Doctors Without Borders said. The organization urged foreign governments to repatriate their citizens from the camp.

The Biden administration, concerned by the security threat posed by the residents of al-Hol and other camps elsewhere in Syria’s northeast, has sought to persuade other governments to repatriate their nationals held at the camp.

Iraq has repatriated thousands of its citizens from neighboring Syria, but Western governments have been slower to act.

In July, France announced that it was repatriating 51 women and children from Syria, for the first time since the collapse of the Islamic State in its final stronghold in eastern Syria in 2019.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock announced this month that seven children, four women and a man who had been taken to Syria as a child had been repatriated, meaning that “almost all” known cases of German women and children in Syrian camps had been closed.

In some cases, countries have canceled the citizenship of their nationals held at al-Hol, as was the case with Shamima Begum, who was a 15-year-old British schoolgirl when she traveled to join the Islamic State group in 2015.

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