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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraqi authorities are preparing to repatriate over 500 nationals from the notorious al-Hol camp in northeast Syria (Rojava) housing people with links to the Islamic State (ISIS) in the coming days, an Iraqi lawmaker said on Monday.
“Over 500 people will be returned. It is the 18th batch. They will arrive at the al-Jada [rehabilitation] camp in southern Mosul in the coming days,” a member of Iraq’s parliamentary committee for migration affairs told Rudaw English on the condition of anonymity.
According to the lawmaker, 10,142 people - or 2,640 families - have been repatriated from al-Hol so far, while 2,350 families - consisting of 8,710 individuals - have left al-Jada in Mosul and returned to their homes in Sunni-majority provinces like Nineveh and Salahaddin which fell to ISIS in 2014.
Sheikhmous Ahmed, head of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES) office for internally displaced persons and refugees, told Rudaw English on Monday that the Iraqi families have left al-Hol camp and are being prepared to be returned in the coming days.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported the new round of repatriation late Sunday.
Iraqis and Syrians make up the majority of the 40,000 ISIS-linked people who have been held at the camp in Hasaka province since the military defeat of ISIS in 2019. The camp has been described as a humanitarian disaster and a breeding ground for terrorism by security experts.
Iraq repatriated over 700 nationals from the camp in October.
Iraqi main border crossing with Syria, al-Qaim, has been closed since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime on December 8. It was temporary opened for humanitarian purposes and to allow Syrian soldiers who had sought asylum in Iraq to return to Syria.
Iraq has also returned over 200 nationals from several Ankara-held areas in northern Syria in recent days through the Ibrahim Khalil border crossing, which connects the Kurdistan Region to Turkey.
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