Iraqis have made up more than half of the population of al-Hol camp in Rojava’s Hasaka province for years. Most of the camp's 56,000 residents are wives and children of the Islamic State (ISIS) fighters.
“Another batch of ISIS-affiliated families, numbering 152, are set to be repatriated to Iraq from al-Hol camp on Tuesday,” Ali Jihangir, spokesperson for Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displaced, told Rudaw’s Hastyar Qadir on Monday.
The families are from the provinces of Nineveh, Salahaadin, and Anbar, and will be transferred to al-Jada camp for rehabilitation before they’re sent back to their homes, the spokesperson added.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) arrested thousands of ISIS fighters and their wives and children when they took control of the group's last stronghold in Syria in March 2019. Al-Hol camp has been branded a breeding ground for ISIS and described as a "ticking time bomb" by Kurdish and Iraqi authorities
Iraq has so far repatriated 750 families from al-Hol, 450 of which have completed the rehabilitation process and been sent back to their original places of residency, according to Jihangir.
Al-Jada is one of just two camps still open in areas under federal Iraqi control, and mainly houses families with suspected links to ISIS.
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