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The United Nations (UN) says it will take over management of a camp in northeastern Syria housing thousands of people it says have links to the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).
Kurdish-led forces running the camp retreated in the face of an offensive by Syrian government forces, sparking riots and forcing aid agencies to suspend operations.
Residents reportedly rushed towards the perimeter of the camp in an apparent attempt to escape, causing rioting and looting.
The ceasefire puts much of northeastern Syria under Damascus’ control, ending years of Kurdish self-rule.
The UN refugee agency, the UN refugee agency, has “taken over management responsibilities” at the Al Hol camp and is working with Syrian authorities to restore humanitarian access, U.N. official Edem Vosolnou said in a briefing to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday. She said the Syrian army had established a security perimeter around the camp.
However, UN spokesman Stefan Dujarric warned that the situation inside remained “tense and unstable” and humanitarian operations remained suspended following the violence.
Meanwhile, the United States has launched a parallel operation to move all high-risk detainees out of the area. U.S. Central Command said on Wednesday It has begun moving up to 7,000 suspected Islamic State fighters from prisons in northeastern Syria to Iraq, It was confirmed that 150 detainees had been moved to a “safe location” on the other side of the border.
Iraqi authorities said all detainees transferred will be prosecuted under Iraqi law.
“This is a measure aimed at protecting regional and international security from imminent threats. However, we stress that this issue should not become a separate long-term strategic burden for Iraq,” said Mohammed Sahib Meguid Marzouk, Iraq’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations.
Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ibrahim Olabi, said his government welcomed the U.S. move to move Islamic State detainees out of Syrian soil and was ready to provide support.
Human rights groups have warned that such transfers could expose detainees to severe abuse.
The probation charity said it believed up to ten British men could be among those transferred as well as teenage detainees, and urged the UK government to urgently intervene. The report said about 55 to 60 British nationals, mostly children, remained detained in camps and prisons in the area.
Katherine Cornett, deputy director of the Probation Department, told the BBC that “transferred prisoners faced torture, death sentences and executions without being given any meaningful opportunity to challenge the charges against them”.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the United States and the United Nations have long called for the repatriation of foreign Islamic State suspects and their families from northeastern Syria, citing political instability and poor conditions in prisons and camps, but many countries have refused to take them.
