A camp in Syria that held families of Islamic State members is nearly empty after repatriations

MAARAT AL-NUMAN, Syria — A camp in northeastern Syria that had housed families of suspected members of the Islamic State group is now largely empty after hundreds of women and children were repatriated to their countries or transferred to other facilities in recent weeks, officials said Friday.

The repatriation to Iraq is part of Syrian government efforts to have suspected IS militants and their family members — held in various camps since the extremist group's was defeated in Syria in 2019 — returned to their countries of origin.

Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, the U.N. refugee agency's representative in Syria, said in a statement that his agency had assisted in the return of 191 Iraqi citizens from Syria's al-Hol camp to Iraq on Thursday.

''With this repatriation, and with today's return of several vulnerable Syrian families supported by UNHCR and partners, Al‑Hol camp will now be practically empty,'' he said.

A Syrian government official also said that about 600 Syrians were moved from al-Hol to Akhtarin camp in northwestern Aleppo province, with transfers ongoing.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said the decision to empty the al-Hol camp was made because of its remote location in the desert — far from services and close to areas where the authorities do not have complete control of the territory.

After the defeat of IS in 2019, around 73,000 people were living at al-Hol, most of them Syrian and Iraqi citizens but also including thousands from other countries. The camp's residents are mostly women, including wives or widows of IS members, and their children.

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.

A decade ago, at the height of its power, IS had captured wide swaths of land that stretched across a third of Syria and Iraq, territory where the extremists established their so-called caliphate. Hundreds of jihadis from foreign countries traveling to Syria to join the IS. Over the years, they had families and raised children there.

Last month, Syrian government forces captured the al-Hol camp in a weekslong offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade. A ceasefire deal has since ended the fighting.

During the fighting, many families are believed to have escaped from the camp.

Save the Children said in a statement Thursday that around 70% of the camp's residents left the camp in recent weeks. The nongovernmental organization said it had long advocated safe repatriation from al-Hol, where "conditions are dire, with a lack of food, water, and widespread violence.''

In a related development, Syrian authorities turned back a group of 34 Australian women and children on Monday after they left Roj camp — similar to al-Hol and also in northeastern Syria. Australian authorities later said they would not repatriate the families.