More than 800 citizens of Iraq departed from the al -hall camp in northeast Syriawhere about 27,000 people are held, including members of alleged jihadists.
“About 850 people from Iraq depart today,” said Jihan Hanan, director of the al -hall camp in Syria
Since the beginning of the year, about 10,000 Iraqis have left the camp during eight phases of repatriation.
More than six years after the defeat of the Islamic State jihadist organization, the camps and prisons run by the Kurds in northeast Syria continue to host tens of thousands of people, many of whom are alleged to have relationships with IK or are considered suspicious.
According to Hanan, the al -hall camp, the largest in northeast Syria, currently hosts 27,000 people, including 15,000 Syrians and 6,300 women and children of 42 nationalities.
The prisoners there live in difficult conditions.
“We have suffered a lot to Al Hall, psychologically, physically and financially,” Um Mahmoud, a 60 -year -old Iraqi, told the French agency to depart from the camp.
“Look at the kids, look at how happy they are, it’s like they are on vacation,” he added.
While many Western countries refused to repatriate their citizens, Baghdad has accelerated repatriation and called on other countries to do the same.
In February, Kurdish official Seihs Ahmed said that the Kurdish administration was aimed at emptying the camps of northeast Syria, removing thousands of Syrian displaced and Iraqi refugees, including the alleged relatives.
The Islamic State occupied very large territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014, before its defeat in Syria in 2019. However, jihadist cores remain, especially in the country’s vast desert.