ISIL/ISIS

Official Fadi al-Qassem says all residents have left al-Hol camp, which long housed relatives of alleged ISIL (ISIS) members.

Syrian authorities say they have fully evacuated and shut down a remote camp that once kept thousands of relatives of alleged members of the armed group ISIL (ISIS).

The last residents were sent out in a convoy Sunday morning, according to Fadi al-Qassem, the Syrian government official overseeing the camp.

“All Syrian and non-Syrian families were relocated,” al-Qassem told Agence France-Presse.

Al-Hol, located in a desert region of the northeastern Hasakah province, had long kept huge numbers of relatives of suspected ISIL fighters.

At its peak in 2019, the camp held some 73,000 people. Last month, there were about 24,000 residents, mostly Syrians but also Iraqis and more than 6,000 other foreigners of around 40 nationalities.

While the camp’s residents were not technically prisoners and most have not been accused of crimes, they had been held in de facto detention at the heavily guarded facility for years.

Last month, Syria’s government took control of the camp from Kurdish authorities, as Damascus extended its reach across northeastern Syria.

Since then, thousands of its detainees, including family members of suspected ISIL members, have left for unknown destinations. Hundreds have been sent to the Akhtarin camp in Aleppo province, while others have been repatriated to Iraq.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor based in the United Kingdom, reported an unspecified number of residents “left the camp individually, without waiting for the organised convoys”. Sources on the ground told Al Jazeera many Syrian nationals left al-Hol for their hometowns, while many of the foreigners travelled west to government strongholds of Idlib or Aleppo governorates.

Al-Qassem said residents who have been relocated are children and women who will “need support for their reintegration”.

The future of the smaller Roj camp in northeastern Syria, which also houses relatives of alleged ISIL members but remains under the control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), remains to be seen.

Most of its inhabitants are foreigners whose home countries have largely refused to receive them.

Syrian authorities turned back buses carrying 34 Australian women and children on February 16 after they left the Roj camp, headed toward Damascus with plans to travel on to Australia. Australian authorities later said they would not repatriate the families.

“We have no sympathy, frankly, for people who travelled overseas in order to participate in what was an attempt to establish a caliphate to undermine and destroy our way of life,” said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, explaining his country’s stance.

While it is “unfortunate” that children have been affected, Australia is “not providing any support”, Albanese added.

Nigerian lawmaker reports ‘at least 50 people dead’ after attack as list of missing is still being compiled.

Gunmen killed at least 50 people and abducted women and children in an overnight assault on a village in northwestern Nigeria’s Zamfara State, authorities and residents said.

The attack started late on Thursday night and continued into Friday morning in Tungan Dutse village in the Bukkuyum area of Zamfara when armed men arrived on motorcycles and began setting fire to buildings and abducting residents.

“They have been moving from one village to another … leaving at least 50 people dead,” said Hamisu A Faru, a lawmaker representing Bukkuyum South.

Faru, speaking to the Reuters news agency by phone on Friday, said the number of people abducted remained unclear as local officials were still compiling lists of the missing.

Residents say warning signs were visible before the attack.

Abdullahi Sani, 41, said villagers alerted security forces after spotting more than 150 motorcycles carrying armed men a day earlier, but no action was taken.

“No one slept yesterday; we are all in pain,” Sani said, adding that three members of his family were killed in the attack.

Areas of Nigeria’s north and west continue to grapple with overlapping security threats, including armed criminal gangs and rebel fighters.

Just last week, at least 46 people were killed in raids in the Borgu area of northwest Niger State. The deadliest assault occurred in the village of Konkoso, where at least 38 residents were shot or had their throats cut, according to reports.

The crisis has drawn increased international involvement.

Nigeria recently expanded security cooperation with the United States after President Donald Trump accused the country of failing to halt the killing of Christians and threatened military intervention.

On December 25, the US launched air strikes on the northern state of Sokoto, conducted in coordination with Nigerian authorities.

Earlier this week, Nigeria’s military confirmed the arrival of 100 US soldiers tasked with training local forces.

Samaila Uba, spokesperson for Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters, said the US troops would offer “technical support” and “intelligence sharing” to help combat “terrorist organisations”, along with “associated equipment”.

He stressed the US personnel would not engage directly in combat and would share technical expertise under Nigerian command.

Operation Hawkeye has killed and captured more than 50 ISIL fighters after hitting about 100 targets.

United States forces have carried out a series of strikes against ISIL (ISIS) targets in Syria in retaliation for last year’s killing of two of its soldiers and an interpreter.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement on Saturday that it attacked more than 30 ISIL targets in Syria between February 3 and 12, hitting the armed group’s infrastructure and weapons storage facilities with “precision munitions”.

CENTCOM said it launched the most recent attacks to “sustain relentless military pressure on remnants from the terrorist network”.

ISIL attacked US and Syrian forces near the historic city of Palmyra in December, killing Sergeant Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, Sergeant William Nathaniel Howard, and Ayad Mansoor Sakat, identified as an American civilian interpreter.

Launched after the killings, Operation Hawkeye has killed and captured more than 50 fighters and hit about 100 ISIL infrastructure targets over the past two months, said CENTCOM.

The US military on Friday completed the transfer of thousands of ISIL detainees from Syria to Iraq, where they are expected to stand trial.

The prisoners were sent to Iraq at the request of Baghdad in a move welcomed by the US-led coalition that had for years fought against the armed group.

In other developments, the Syrian Ministry of Defence confirmed that government forces took control of the al-Tanf military base in the east of the country, which was run for years by US troops fighting ISIL.

The US-led coalition worked alongside the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the battle that led to ISIL’s territorial defeat in Syria in 2019.

However, Washington has now drawn close to Syria’s new authorities, recently saying that the purpose of its alliance with the SDF was largely over.

The US withdrawal from al-Tanf comes as Damascus seeks to extend its control over all of Syria.

Iraq says more than 3,000 Syrians are among the ISIL-linked detainees transferred to one of its prisons by US military.

More than 5,000 ISIL-linked (ISIS) detainees have been transferred from Syrian jails to a prison in neighbouring Iraq so far, according to Iraq’s Ministry of Justice.

In comments to the Iraqi News Agency on Friday, ministry spokesperson Ahmed Laibi said the transfers and ongoing detention of the prisoners had been carried out at the request of an international coalition led by the United States to combat ISIL, of which Iraq is a key member.

In separate comments on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein gave a lower figure, telling Reuters that about 3,000 ISIL-linked detainees had been transferred.

He told the news agency that the process was ongoing and that Baghdad was in discussions with various countries about repatriating their nationals who had been transferred.

Iraq would need more ⁠financial assistance to ⁠deal with the intake, he said, adding that there had been a recent ⁠uptick in ISIL activity in Syria.

The US military has been transporting thousands of ISIL-linked prisoners from jails and detention centres previously run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeast Syria.

The transfers have come as control of the prisons has been handed over to the Syrian government, amid a push by Damascus to assert its authority over the full extent of a country still fragmented in the wake of a brutal war.

Deadly clashes with SDF forces broke out amid the Syrian army’s advance in recent weeks, including in and around key prison sites, resulting in some ISIL detainees escaping and raising fears the armed group could exploit any security vacuum to regroup.

A ceasefire has since been struck between the government and the SDF.

Detainees mostly Syrian nationals

Laibi, the Iraqi Justice Ministry spokesperson, said that of the 5,064 ISIL detainees transferred so far, more than 3,000 were Syrian, while at least 270 were Iraqi.

He said the detainees were being held in a single prison, in a section separated from other prisoners.

The detainees would all be investigated and prosecuted under Iraqi law, he said, while the responsibility for feeding the thousands of detainees was being handled by the international coalition, rather than Iraq.

Last month, lawyers for a group of French ISIL suspects who had been transported by the US military from Syria to Iraqi prisons in an earlier series of transfers claimed the inmates had been subjected to “torture and inhumane treatment” there.

Damascus becomes US’s main anti-ISIL partner

The US military has previously said up to 7,000 people with alleged ISIL links could be transferred to Iraqi-controlled facilities.

US Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US forces in the Middle East, said last month that facilitating the secure transfer of detainees was critical to preventing mass breakouts that could pose a direct threat to the US and regional security.

The statement came shortly after the US special envoy to Syria said that Washington’s main partner against ISIL in Syria would be the Syrian government, rather than the SDF, which had held that position for years.

The shift followed Syria – under new President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former leader of the armed group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, who was once deemed a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” by the US – joining the anti-ISIL coalition in November.

US departs Syrian base

The ongoing transfers of the detainees from Syria have come as the US military reduces its presence in the country, where it has conducted operations against ISIL for years.

On Thursday, Syrian ⁠forces ⁠announced they had taken control of the al-Tanf military base, a strategic garrison near the border with Iraq and Jordan, following the withdrawal of US forces.

Cooper, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, said the departure was “part of a deliberate and conditions-based transition”, and that US forces remained “poised to respond to any [ISIL] threats that arise in the region as we support partner-led efforts” to prevent the group’s resurgence.

While ISIL was largely defeated in 2017 in Iraq and in Syria two years later, sleeper cells still carry out attacks in both countries.

Syria’s defence ministry says its forces have taken control of the strategic base amid coordination with the US.

Syrian ⁠forces ⁠have taken control of the strategic al-Tanf military base near the border with Iraq and Jordan, the Syrian defence ministry has said, amid the withdrawal of a longstanding United States troop presence at the base.

The ministry said in a statement on Thursday that Syrian Arab Army units had taken control of al-Tanf, securing the base and its surroundings, “through coordination between the Syrian and American sides”.

Army units had “begun deploying along the Syrian-Iraqi-Jordanian” border nearby, the ministry said, while border guards would be deployed in the coming days.

The base was established during Syria’s civil war in 2014 as a ‌key hub for operations by the global coalition against ISIL (ISIS), which at the time controlled large areas of Syria and Iraq until the group was vanquished in 2017.

The US withdrawal from the base comes months after Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former leader of the armed group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, who the US once deemed a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist”, joined the anti-ISIL coalition in November.

The US military has not officially commented on the pullout, but Trump has expressed an interest in withdrawing US troops from Syria since his first term.

Syrian government expands control

The pullout also follows ⁠a US-brokered deal to integrate the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces – a key US partner in the fight against ISIL – into Syrian government institutions, an agreement the US hailed as a major step towards national unity and ⁠reconciliation in Syria.

Last month, as al-Sharaa’s government pushed to expand its control over the country, Syrian government forces captured large areas of previously Kurdish-held territory in northeast Syria, amid deadly clashes with the SDF.

A ceasefire was later struck between the sides.

Amid the advance of Syrian forces, the US military has been transferring thousands of ISIL prisoners from jails previously run by the SDF in northeastern Syria, as the facilities were transferred to Syrian government control.

US drawdown

While the size of the US deployment in Syria has fluctuated over the years, with precise figures often unclear due to the classified nature of many operations, a Pentagon announcement in July 2025 said there were about 1,500 American soldiers in Syria.

The size of the deployment currently stands at 900, The Associated Press reported.

Earlier this month, an Al Jazeera correspondent on the ground reported that US military personnel appeared to be drawing down their presence from watchtowers surrounding a military installation in the al-Shaddadi area in northeastern Hasakah province.

Soldiers were also seen lowering the US flag from one tower, while equipment used to manage aircraft takeoffs and landings at the base’s airstrip was no longer visible.

The US carried out a round of “large-scale” attacks against ISIL in Syria in January following an ambush that killed two US soldiers and a civilian interpreter in the city of Palmyra in December.