Iraq repatriates more families from Daesh-linked Al-Hol camp
BAGHDAD: Iraq has repatriated more than 150 additional families from Al-Hol camp in the neighboring Syrian Arab Republic, an Iraqi security official said on Thursday, the latest such transfer from the camp where many have alleged terrorist links.
Kurdish-run camps and prisons in northeastern Syria still hold about 56,000 people from dozens of countries, many of them the family members of Daesh suspects, more than five years after the terrorists' territorial defeat in Syria.
While many Western countries refuse to take back their nationals, Baghdad has taken the lead by accelerating repatriations and urging others to follow suit.
The latest group of 505 people is the sixth since the beginning of the year to be repatriated.
They left the camp on Wednesday, said Jihan Hanan, Al-Hol's director.
The Iraqi security official confirmed that about '153 families arrived yesterday' in Iraq.
Daesh captured nearly a third of Iraq before local forces, backed by a US-led coalition, defeated them in 2017.
In Syria, US-backed Kurdish forces dislodged IS from the last of its Syrian-held territory in 2019.
Al-Hol is located in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Syria.
Iraq has intensified its efforts to bring back its nationals amid concerns about the security situation in Syria following the ouster of Bashar Assad in December, Iraqi National Security Adviser Qassem Al-Araji said last week.
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Arab News
15 hours ago
- Arab News
Homes smashed, help slashed: no respite for returning Syrians
DAMASCUS: Around a dozen Syrian women sat in a circle at a UN-funded center in Damascus, happy to share stories about their daily struggles, but their bonding was overshadowed by fears that such meet-ups could soon end due to international aid cuts. The community center, funded by the United Nations' refugee agency (UNHCR), offers vital services that families cannot get elsewhere in a country scarred by war, with an economy broken by decades of mismanagement and Western sanctions. 'We have no stability. We are scared and we need support,' said Fatima Al-Abbiad, a mother of four. 'There are a lot of problems at home, a lot of tension, a lot of violence because of the lack of income.' But the center's future now hangs in the balance as the UNHCR has had to cut down its activities in Syria because of the international aid squeeze caused by US President Donald Trump's decision to halt foreign aid. The cuts will close nearly half of the UNHCR centers in Syria and the widespread services they provide — from educational support and medical equipment to mental health and counselling sessions — just as the population needs them the most. There are hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees returning home after the fall of Bashar Assad last year. UNHCR's representative in Syria, Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, said the situation was a 'disaster' and that the agency would struggle to help returning refugees. 'I think that we have been forced — here I use very deliberately the word forced — to adopt plans which are more modest than we would have liked,' he told Context/Thomson Reuters Foundation in Damascus. 'It has taken us years to build that extraordinary network of support, and almost half of them are going to be closed exactly at the moment of opportunity for refugee and IDPs (internally displaced people) return.' BIG LOSS A UNHCR spokesperson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the agency would shut down around 42 percent of its 122 community centers in Syria in June, which will deprive some 500,000 people of assistance and reduce aid for another 600,000 that benefit from the remaining centers. The UNHCR will also cut 30 percent of its staff in Syria, said the spokesperson, while the livelihood program that supports small businesses will shrink by 20 percent unless it finds new funding. Around 100 people visit the center in Damascus each day, said Mirna Mimas, a supervisor with GOPA-DERD, the church charity that runs the center with UNHCR. Already the center's educational programs, which benefited 900 children last year, are at risk, said Mimas. Nour Huda Madani, 41, said she had been 'lucky' to receive support for her autistic child at the center. 'They taught me how to deal with him,' said the mother of five. Another visitor, Odette Badawi, said the center was important for her well-being after she returned to Syria five years ago, having fled to Lebanon when war broke out in Syria in 2011. '(The center) made me feel like I am part of society,' said the 68-year-old. Mimas said if the center closed, the loss to the community would be enormous: 'If we must tell people we are leaving, I will weep before they do,' she said UNHCR HELP 'SELECTIVE' Aid funding for Syria had already been declining before Trump's seismic cuts to the US Agency for International Development this year and cuts by other countries to international aid budgets. But the new blows come at a particularly bad time. Since former president Assad was ousted by Islamist rebels last December, around 507,000 Syrians have returned from neighboring countries and around 1.2 million people displaced inside the country went back home, according to UN estimates. Llosa said, given the aid cuts, UNHCR would have only limited scope to support the return of some of the 6 million Syrians who fled the country since 2011. 'We will need to help only those that absolutely want to go home and simply do not have any means to do so,' Llosa said. 'That means that we will need to be very selective as opposed to what we wanted, which was to be expansive.' ESSENTIAL SUPPORT Ayoub Merhi Hariri had been counting on support from the livelihood program to pay off the money he borrowed to set up a business after he moved back to Syria at the end of 2024. After 12 years in Lebanon, he returned to Daraa in southwestern Syria to find his house destroyed — no doors, no windows, no running water, no electricity. He moved in with relatives and registered for livelihood support at a UN-backed center in Daraa to help him start a spice manufacturing business to support his family and ill mother. While his business was doing well, he said he would struggle to repay his creditors the 20 million Syrian pounds ($1,540) he owed them now that his livelihood support had been cut. 'Thank God (the business) was a success, and it is generating an income for us to live off,' he said. 'But I can't pay back the debt,' he said, fearing the worst. 'I'll have to sell everything.'
Asharq Al-Awsat
a day ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Red Sea Marine Traffic Up 60% after Houthis Narrowed Targets
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Saudi Gazette
a day ago
- Saudi Gazette
Israeli military recovers two hostages' bodies in southern Gaza
JERUSALEM — Israeli forces have recovered the bodies of two Israeli-Americans taken back to Gaza as hostages during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, the Israeli military says. Judi Weinstein Haggai, 70, who was also a Canadian citizen, and her husband Gadi Haggai, 72, were murdered by gunmen from the Mujahideen Brigades group when they attacked Kibbutz Nir Oz, a statement said. Their bodies were found in the southern Khan Younis area of Gaza overnight and brought back to Israel for forensic identification. There are now 56 hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza, at least 20 of whom are believed to be alive. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he and his wife sent their condolences to the families of Judi and Gadi Haggai. "Our hearts grieve over this terrible loss. May their memories be blessed," he added."I would like to thank, and express appreciation to, the fighters and commanders for this determined and successful operation. We will not rest, nor will we be silent, until we return home all of our hostages — the living and the deceased."The couple's families recalled how they "went out for a walk on the morning of that cursed Saturday and never returned"."We welcome the closure and their return to a proper burial at home, in Israel," they an English teacher, and Gadi Haggai, who used to work in Kibbutz Nir Oz's kitchen, were last seen alive in a video they shared with a group chat at the start of the 7 October attack. They were seen taking cover in a field as incoming rockets fired from Gaza streaked overhead and the sound of gunfire was later told friends and relatives they had been wounded, before ceasing couple's daughter Iris Weinstein Haggai said after the attack her mother had told her they had been "shot by terrorists on a motorcycle and that my dad was wounded really bad". She added: "Paramedics tried to send her an ambulance. The ambulance got hit by a rocket."In December 2023, the kibbutz announced that both Judi and Gadi were killed that day and their bodies were being held hostage in Wednesday, an Israeli military official said the couple's bodies were recovered from the Khan Younis area following an operation based on "precise intelligence" from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Shin Bet security said they could not disclose further details due to the sensitivity of the operation. However, Israeli Army Radio reported the intelligence was obtained through the Shin Bet's interrogation of a Palestinian fighter captured by Israeli troops in Gaza."We will keep doing the utmost for the mission of bringing our hostages back - the living, to reunite with their families, and the deceased to dignified burial. We will deploy all the methods and tools in our disposal for this goal," the military official Hostages and Missing Families Forum urged decision-makers to do everything they could to agree a new ceasefire deal with Hamas to secure the return of all the remaining hostages."There is no need to wait another 608 agonizing days for this," it said. "The mission can be completed as early as tomorrow morning. This is what the majority of the Israeli people want."US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was "united in prayer" for the Haggai family."Hamas must release all remaining hostages, including Omer Neutra and Itay Chen," he added, referring to two other Israeli-Americans who the Israeli military says were killed on 7 October while serving as soldiers and whose bodies were taken back to Prime Minister Mark Carney said: "The return of their remains is a time to begin to heal and to rest. We mourn with [Judi Haggai's] family. May her memory be a blessing."Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the unprecedented cross-border attack almost 20 months ago, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken four people, two of them dead, were already being held captive in Gaza before the far, 199 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive, mostly through two temporary ceasefire deals with least 54,677 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to the territory's Hamas-run health imposed a total blockade on Gaza on 2 March and resumed its military offensive against Hamas two weeks later, collapsing a two-month truce during which 33 Israeli hostages and five Thai hostages were freed. Israel said it wanted to put pressure on Hamas to release the remaining 19 May, the Israeli military launched an expanded offensive that Netanyahu said would see troops "take control of all areas" of Gaza. Israel also partially eased its blockade, allowing some food into the territory amid warnings from experts of a looming than 4,400 people have reportedly been killed in Gaza over the past three months, while 640,000 others have been displaced again by Israeli ground operations and evacuation of a new ceasefire deal faded last week, with Hamas and Israel remaining at odds over the conditions of the latest US said it was prepared to release 10 living hostages and the bodies of 18 dead ones, which was the number specified in US envoy Steve Witkoff's proposal, in exchange for a 60-day truce and the release of Palestinian the group also repeated its demands for guarantees that the truce would lead to a permanent ceasefire, as well as a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and the resumption of unrestricted aid called Hamas's statement a refusal of the proposal, and Witkoff said it was totally unacceptable. But a Hamas official insisted it had acted positively and responsibly. — BBC
