26 people died in al-Hol camp so far in 2022, UN official says
Violence is increasing at the al-Hol camp in Syria, a United Nations official warned on Thursday, saying that 26 people have lost their lives this year at the camp, Qazet.az reports.
The warning came after a four-day visit by the U.N. resident coordinator and humanitarian coordinator in Syria to the northeastern Hassakeh and Raqqa governorates.
''This year alone, at least 26 people, including three this week, have been murdered in the camp. Twenty of those murdered were women,'' Imran Riza said in a statement.
He warned that Syria is facing a severe water crisis from drinking water to water for irrigation, food production, and power generation that is affecting the health and livelihoods of residents.
The al-Hol camp is run by the YPG/PKK terror group and houses 55,000 suspected Daesh members and their families from Syria, Iraq and 60 other countries with more than half of the residents being children.
However, it also houses many families who simply fled Daesh occupation of their homes in Iraq and Syria. Some have been there for more than four years.
The U.N. has deplored inhumane and degrading conditions at the camp with human rights experts urging states to repatriate their citizens that are held at that location.
The YPG terrorist group seized much of northern and eastern Syria from the Daesh terrorist group with United States backing. They have since held thousands of Daesh terrorists in prisons, while their wives and children – numbering in the tens of thousands, many of them foreigners – are living in camps.
Al-Hol camp alone houses nearly 65,000 people, including about 28,000 Syrians, 30,000 Iraqis and some 10,000 other foreigners of many nationalities, according to U.N. estimates. Most of the civilians were forcefully brought to the camp by YPG terrorists in April 2017.
Several human rights organizations, along with the U.N., have repeatedly warned that conditions in the al-Hol camp are worsening each day and have demanded access to the centers where the families of former Daesh members are being held.
Daesh, which once controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq, lost its last sliver of territory, in eastern Syria in March 2019.