AL-HOL, Syria — Syrian government forces have taken full control of the al-Hol camp in north-east Syria, a vast site that houses thousands of people linked to the Islamic State group, in a move that underlines Damascus’s push to absorb Kurdish-led security structures in the region.
A convoy of armoured vehicles carrying government troops entered the camp on Wednesday, a day after fighters from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces withdrew from the facility they had administered for years. The takeover followed two weeks of fighting in which government forces captured territory previously held by the SDF, and came as both sides said a new truce was in place.
Al-Hol, located in Syria’s Hasakeh province, has long been central to the unresolved question of what to do with families of Islamic State members and supporters stranded in detention and displacement sites since the group’s territorial defeat. At its height in 2019, the camp population reached about 73,000. Numbers have since fallen as some states have repatriated citizens, though the camp remains one of the largest concentrations of IS-linked people anywhere in the region.
Syrian officials and the SDF have not provided a detailed public account of how camp administration will be restructured.
The camp is currently home to about 24,000 people, most of them women and children linked to Islamic State fighters. According to figures cited in the AP report, around 14,500 are Syrians and nearly 3,000 are Iraqis. A further 6,500 foreign nationals — many from countries beyond the region — are held in a separate, high-security section of the camp.
There were unconfirmed reports that some families fled during the disruption around the handover, though no official tally has been issued. The announcement of a four-day ceasefire late on Tuesday appeared to stabilise the immediate situation across much of the north-east on Wednesday, after an earlier truce broke down.
The camp’s transfer is part of a wider attempt to settle the status of the SDF, the US-backed force that led ground operations against Islamic State in Syria and has governed large parts of the north-east since the war’s later stages. In recent days the SDF has faced intensified pressure from Damascus to integrate into state institutions, including the armed forces, as government units move into areas previously secured by Kurdish-led formations.
Control of Islamic State detention sites has become the most sensitive element of the transition. The SDF currently guards more than a dozen prisons holding about 9,000 IS-linked detainees, and retains control of most of those facilities despite government statements that they should be handed over.
Tensions sharpened after detainees escaped from a prison in Shaddadeh, in the north-eastern province of Hasakeh. The government and the SDF traded accusations over responsibility for the breach. Syrian state media reported that government forces subsequently retook the jail and captured many of those who had fled.
The largest Islamic State detention facility is the Gweiran prison in Hassakeh city, now referred to as Panorama, which has held roughly 4,500 detainees. Hassakeh remains under full SDF control, and no confirmed transfer timetable has been announced for that site.
Syria’s Defence Ministry spokesman, Brig Gen Hassan Abdul-Ghani, said this week that government forces “were and still are in direct confrontation” with Islamic State, and indicated that once prisons are taken over they would be placed under the authority of the Interior Ministry. The statements were framed as reassurance that Damascus intends to maintain counterterrorism operations as it expands its footprint in the north-east.
Washington has signalled support for the shift. Tom Barrack, the US envoy to Syria, said the SDF’s role as the primary anti-IS force had “largely expired” because Damascus was “willing and positioned” to assume security responsibilities, adding that the United States was facilitating the transition rather than prolonging a separate SDF mandate.
Islamic State was driven from its last territorial enclaves in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019, but cells continue to conduct attacks in both countries. The immediate question for Syrian, Kurdish and US officials is whether the handover of camps and prisons can proceed without further breakdowns that could enable escapes, destabilise local security, or create openings for the group to rebuild networks.
