BEIRUT (Washington Insider Magazine) – Local Kurdish officials and an opposition conflict watchdog reported Tuesday that clashes between militants of the Islamic State and US-backed Syrian Kurdish troops killed at least 3 people within a restive camp site in northeastern Syria that shelters IS families.
According to Shixmus Ehmed, head of the Kurdish-led administration’s department for refugees and displaced persons, the hostilities began late Monday night near al-Hol in Syria’s Hassakeh province, when Kurdish militants got into an altercation with an IS sleeper cell.
He added that automatic weapons, handguns, and rocket-propelled grenades were used in the conflict, and that the situation is still hostile. For years, the enormous al-Hol camp has housed thousands of women and children, largely IS militants’ wives and widows.
According to Asayish, a Kurdish police unit, its members were ambushed and shot back, killing one IS member and wounded others. According to the report, authorities were cautious throughout the confrontations because IS members had hidden among civilians. The police could not provide any civilian casualty numbers.
Following an IS raid on a jail in the province capital of Hassakeh, where some 3,000 minors and militants are detained, Syrian Kurdish fighters have increased their patrols at al-Hol in recent times, according to ABC NEWS.
After that attack, IS militants and US-backed troops clashed for ten days, killing approximately 500 people until the situation was handled. It was IS’s deadliest strike since the group’s so-called Islamic “caliphate” fell apart in 2019, raising worries of a resurgence.
Following the clashes on Sunday night, Kurdish forces surrounded the region to prohibit any IS militant from escaping, according to Ehmed, who did not provide a breakdown of the casualties.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor headquartered in the United Kingdom, a child and a mother, as well as an IS militant, were killed. 6 S children and 4 women were also injured, according to the Observatory.
The Observatory also said that Kurdish soldiers enforced a curfew within the camp, and that the combat was centered in sections housing members of the family of Syrian and Iraqi IS militants.
Al-Hol is home to over 50,000 Iraqis and Syrians. Children account for over 20,000 of them, while the remainder are primarily women.
Approximately 2,000 women from 57 different countries, along with 8,000 children, are kept in a nearby isolated and closely guarded area of the camp called the “annex.” The annex’s women are said to be the most committed IS supporters.
Women at al-Hol attempted to capture their Kurdish guards in February, resulting in a shooting that killed 1 child and injured numerous others.
Days after the January prison assault, IS chief Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was killed. On Feb. 3, when American soldiers raided his refuge in the northern Syrian town of Atmeh, close to the Turkish border, he blew himself up together with his family members, according to US sources.
Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi has been appointed the new leader of the Islamic State.
