More than 200 families to leave Syria's Al-Hol camp next week: activist

More than 200 families are preparing to leave Syria’s infamous Al-Hol camp in the coming days after receiving bail, a Syrian activist has said.

Osama Abu Uday from Raqqa province told The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister site that a list of 215 families has been prepared for their departure from the camp next week. They include 600 women and children and will head to the city of Raqqa and its countryside.

Tribal leaders from the province had handed a list of the names of these families to the camp’s Kurdish administration back in March.

At least 800 families – with an approximate total of 3,200 children and women from Raqqa – have left Al-Hol camp in four batches between 2018 and 2021, under the sponsorship of tribal sheikhs in the region, Abu Uday told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

The Kurdish-run Al-Hol camp holds around 55,000 people including 31,000 children, many of them suspected relatives of the Islamic State group which controlled Raqqa and large swathes of Syria under its self-proclaimed caliphate before being defeated in 2019.

The camp also contains third-party nationals from Western countries despite UN pressure to take them back.

The return of family members of the fighters who were captured or killed has been a thorny issue for European countries, particularly in France.