ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Syrian refugee was found shot dead in the early hours of Wednesday morning in the notorious al-Hol camp in northeast Syria (Rojava), a conflict monitor reported while noting a string of recent murders at the camp.
A Syrian woman was gunned down in the fourth section of al-Hol, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Wednesday.
The monitor attributes the recent murder to the Islamic State (ISIS) sleeper cells that are active in the camp.
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. Most of these people are held at al-Hol, which is home to more than 60,000 people - mostly women and children of different nationalities.
The death of the Syrian woman is one of several recent incidents of murder at the camp. Three other killings have been reported in the camp this month.
The body of an unidentified woman was found in the sewage complex of the camp on Tuesday, according to SOHR. Another Syrian woman and an Iraqi man were killed in al-Hol earlier in December.
An Iraqi child and two Iraqi women were also killed in al-Hol when a water tank crashed into their tent in November, Save the Children reported.
The camp has been branded a breeding ground for terrorism.
Kurdish and US officials have made repeated calls on the international community to repatriate their nationals from the camps, where children are exposed to ISIS ideology, but only a few countries have responded positively. Most are worried about security concerns and are generally limiting repatriations, even for children.
Amnesty International renewed its repatriation calls in a recent report, saying children held in al-Hol camp “have been arbitrarily deprived of their liberty and exposed to life-threatening and inhumane conditions.”
Finland repatriated a family of five people from the camp via Turkey, Finland’s Mission to the United Nations said in a statement on Friday. Thirty ISIS-linked Finns have been previously repatriated.
Two Swiss nationals were handed over to Switzerland last week.
A group of 194 people from 48 families also left al-Hol camp in early November.
Human rights groups have previously warned of squalid conditions in al-Hol, described as “filthy and often inhuman” by Human Rights Watch.
