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Syria has begun evacuating the remaining residents of Al-Hol camp — home to the relatives of suspected fighters from the so-called Islamic State (IS) group — as authorities move to clear the formerly Kurdish-controlled facility, according to officials.
Al-Hol, which is located in a desert region of the northeastern Hasakeh province, had been Syria’s largest camp housing family members of suspected IS militants.
Government forces captured the camp from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) last month as Damascus extended its control across swathes of Syria’s northeast.
Since then, thousands of relatives of foreign jihadists have left the camp for unknown destinations. The facility had housed some 24,000 people, mostly Syrians but also Iraqis and more than 6,000 other foreigners of around 40 nationalities.
According to figures from the British NGO Rights & Security International — last updated in September 2025 — 11 EU member states have repatriated nearly 1,000 of their citizens detained in camps in northeastern Syria, including Al-Hol.
Fadi al-Qassem, the official responsible for Al-Hol’s affairs, said that the camp “lacks the basic conditions for habitation”, prompting an urgent decision to relocate residents to camps in Aleppo province.
The evacuation started on Tuesday and will be completed within a week, he said.
At its peak after the defeat of IS in Syria in 2019, around 73,000 people were living in Al-Hol. The residents are mostly children and women, including many wives or widows of IS group members.
The camp’s residents are not technically prisoners, and most have not been accused of crimes, but they have been held in de facto detention at the heavily guarded facility.
Kurds lose control
The SDF said on 20 January that they had been forced to retreat from Al-Hol, while the army — which entered the camp the next day — accused them of abandoning the site.
On Sunday, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said it had “observed a significant decrease in the number of residents in Al-Hol camp in recent weeks”.
“The government has informed UNHCR and partners of its plan to relocate the relatively small remaining caseload in the coming days to Akhtarin camp … and has requested our support to assist the population there,” the agency said in a statement.
“It remains important that the government is able to identify the foreign nationals who have left (Al-Hol) so that appropriate repatriation processes can be pursued,” it added.
Foreign women and children, including many from Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia, had lived in the high-security section of the camp, separate from Syrians and Iraqis.
Kurdish forces still control the Roj camp in Syria’s northeast, where more relatives of foreign jihadists are detained. It houses some 2,200 people of about 50 nationalities.
Kurdish authorities on Monday released 34 Australians from Roj, but said they had to return due to coordination issues with Damascus. Australia has refused to help them.
Separately, the US military last week said it had completed the transfer of thousands of IS suspects — including many Syrians but also foreigners — from Kurdish-run prisons in Syria to Iraq. They will stand trial in Iraq under an agreement with Washington.
Human Rights Watch warned on Tuesday that the roughly 5,700 transferred detainees “are at risk of enforced disappearance, unfair trials, torture, ill-treatment, and violations of the right to life” in Iraq.
Additional sources • AFP