Children sitting near a barrier as a woman carries a bucket of water, while Iraqi nationals prepare to leave the al-Hol camp governed by the Kurds, on Aug. 28, 2025. (Credit: Delil Souleiman/AFP.)
Kurdish security forces in northeast Syria announced Wednesday they thwarted an escape attempt by around 50 people from the al-Hol camp, where relatives of suspected jihadists are among those held.
More than six years after the defeat of the Islamic State group (IS,) camps and prisons run by the Kurdish autonomous administration in northeast Syria still house tens of thousands of people, many of whom are allegedly tied to IS or are suspected of links to the group.
In a statement, Kurdish security forces said they had foiled on Tuesday “a collective escape attempt by several families of the terrorist organization Daesh (the Arabic acronym for IS), totaling 56 people.”
The detainees tried to flee “in a large vehicle” on Tuesday, according to the statement. Kurdish forces “intercepted the vehicle as it tried to pass through the main entrance, and arrested everyone inside.”
Al-Hol is the region’s largest camp, and detainees there live in notoriously harsh conditions. According to its director, Jihan Hanan, it currently houses 27,000 people, including 15,000 Syrians and about 6,300 foreign women and children from 42 nationalities. Many Western countries still refuse to repatriate their nationals.
IS had seized vast swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014, before its defeat in Syria in 2019. But jihadist cells remain active, particularly in the country's vast desert.
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