(ANSAmed)- BEIRUT, FEBRUARY 19 - The number of killings of
civilians has risen recently in a refugee camp in northeastern
Syria: over the past month, about 20 people including both male
and female IDPs have been killed in the al-Hol camp.
The killings have been attributed to Islamic State cells,
according to local and international humanitarian organizations.
Located near the Syrian-Iraqi border in the Syrian region of
Hasakah, the camp has for the past two years hosted tens of
thousands of mostly Syrian and Iraqi IDPs from areas where IS
had been present between 2014 and 2019.
The camp, which some have called a "small Islamic State", is
officially run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces
(SDF), supported by the US-led coalition against the Islamic
State.
It had been created in the 1990s to host Iraqi refugees
during the Gulf Wars.
Since December 2018, the al-Hol camp has gradually filled
with tens of thousands of mostly Syrians fleeing regions in
eastern Syria in which a military campaign led by the
coalition-backed SDF ended officially in Syria in the spring of
2019.
The camp currently hosts about 65,000 people, around half of
whom hold Iraqi nationality.
Most of the camp inhabitants are women and
children.(ANSAmed).
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