ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – The Syrian government has begun evacuating the remaining residents of the notorious al-Hol camp in Rojava (northeast Syria), housing relatives of Islamic State (ISIS) fighters, state TV and AFP reported on Tuesday. 

Al-Hol is a large camp located in Rojava’s Hasaka province that houses thousands of women and children of ISIS fighters. The camp, long held by Kurdish-led forces, was taken by the Syrian Arab Army and its affiliated factions last month as Kurdish fighters were forced to withdraw amid a brutal offensive. 

Fadi al-Qassem, the manager of al-Hol’s affairs, told AFP that “we carried out an evaluation of the camp’s needs and found the camp lacks the basic conditions for habitation, so we made an urgent decision.” 

Residents of the camp will be moved to facilities in the northern Aleppo province, and al-Hol “will be fully evacuated within a week, and nobody will remain,” according to Qassem. 

State TV also reported that “hundreds of residents were transferred from al-Hol camp in Hasaka province to an equipped camp in Akhtarin, northern Aleppo.” 

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) on Sunday confirmed that it observed a significant decrease in the number of residents in al-Hol, and Damascus told them that they plan to transfer the residents to Akhtarin camp. 

The smaller Roj camp, also in Hasaka province, remains under Kurdish control. It houses some 2,000 foreign ISIS families. 

ISIS detention facilities in Rojava have recently witnessed a security breach following the military operation launched by the Syrian army and its affiliated factions into areas controlled by Kurdish-led forces, leading to the release of a large number of prisoners.

With the increasingly unstable security situation, Kurdish and Iraqi authorities have intensified their call on the international community to repatriate their ISIS-linked nationals.