About 7,000 children of suspected jihadists remain detained in camps in northeastern Syria and are at risk of attacks and violence, the NGO Save the Children warned on Wednesday, calling for their repatriation.
If the Save the Children association welcomed the increase in the number of repatriations of women and children detained in camps in northeastern Syria in 2022, it wanted to alert, Wednesday, December 21, on the situation of 7,000 children of presumed jihadists still affected by these detentions. A total of 517 women and children were repatriated in 2022 from camps in northeast Syria, according to figures recorded by Save The Children.
150 French children in Syria
France has in particular changed its position by organizing two waves of repatriation in 2022. A hundred women and children of jihadists have thus been transferred to French soil. As winter has descended on the detention camps, families have launched a new appeal in recent days alerting to the fate of the 150 French children still in Syria.
The families, like the NGOs, insist on the undignified conditions in which the families of foreign jihadists live in the camps managed by the Kurdish forces of Syria. These camps are in fact out of control and violence is added to deprivation. Children are victims: in November, two Egyptian girls were found murdered in a sewer in the Al Hol camp.
Since the territorial defeat of the Islamic State group in 2019, around 56,000 relatives of jihadists have been detained in the Al Hol and Roj camps, controlled by the Kurds and where violence is endemic and deprivation numerous. Among them are more than 10,000 foreigners from around 60 countries, including French and other Europeans, housed separately in a part of the camp called the “Annex”.
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