Us-backed Syrian forces free women in raid of Daesh camp
Us-backed Syrian fighters said on Saturday they have concluded a 24-day sweep at a sprawling camp in northeast Syria housing tens of thousands of women and children linked to the Daesh group.
Dozens of extremists were detained and weapons were confiscated in the operation at Al Hol camp, which began on Aug. 25, the Usbacked forces said.
Daesh sleeper cells preparing a new generation of militants - boys and girls being fed extremist ideology to eventually try and set up a second so-called Daesh caliphate - were also uncovered, the statement by the Internal Security Forces said.
It added that the operation was assisted by the Us-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces as well as members of the Us-led coalition.
The operation at A -Hol in the northeastern province of Hassakeh also led to the release of two Yazidi girls taken from Iraq as sex slaves years ago and four non-yazidi women, who had been chained and subjected to torture.
“The operation was launched following the
Dozens of extremists were detained and weapons were confiscated in the operation at Al Hol camp, which began on Aug.25, say forces; Israel strike on Syrian airport kills 5 soldiers
increasing crimes of killing and torture committed by Daesh cells against the camp residents,” said the statement from the Us-backed forces, using another acronym for the Daesh group.
It added that since the beginning of the year, the extremists have killed 44 camp residents and humanitarian workers.
The statement also said that 226 people, including 36 women, were detained in Al Hol widely seen as a breeding ground for the Daesh.
Some 50,000 Syrians and Iraqis are crowded into tents in the fenced-in camp. Nearly 20,000 of them are children; most of the rest are women, wives and widows of Daesh fighters.
In a separate, heavily guarded section of the camp known as the annex are an additional 2,000 women from 57 other countries - they are considered the most die-hard Daesh supporters along with their children, numbering about 8,000.
“Daesh has depended mainly on women and children, as real resources related directly to the Daesh leaders, to maintain the Daesh extremist ideology and spread it in the camp,” the statement said.
The camp was initially used to house the families of Daesh fighters in late 2018 as Usbacked Kurdish-led forces recaptured territory in eastern Syria from the militants.
In March 2019, they seized the last Daeshheld villages, ending the “caliphate” that the group had declared over large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
The United States and other nations have struggled to repatriate the families, but have had only very limited success.
Meanwhile, an Israeli strike on the Damascus International Airport and nearby military posts south of the Syrian capital killed five soldiers, state media reported on Saturday.
State news agency SANA, quoting an unnamed military official, said the strikes happened ater midnight on Friday, causing “material losses” as well.
It added that some of the Israeli missiles were shot down before reaching their targets.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said the strikes killed five Syrian soldiers and two members of Iran-backed groups.
The Israeli army declined comment, saying it does not react to “foreign reports.”
The strike on the Damascus International Airport came 10 days ater Israel launched a missile atack Syria’s Aleppo airport in the north that put it out of commission for a few days. It was the second atack on Aleppo’s airport within a week.
On June 10, Israeli airstrikes on Damascus International Airport caused significant damage to infrastructure and runways and rendered the main runway unserviceable. The airport opened two weeks later following renovation work.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations.
Israel has acknowledged, however, that it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups, such as Lebanon’s Hizbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.