A fire broke out in Section Four of al Hawl IDP Camp when a heater fell inside one of the rooms in the shelter constructed from mud on February 27, 2021, resulting in the deaths of seven civilians (six children and a woman), who had been displaced from al Qouriya city in the east of Deir Ez-Zour governorate. Twenty other civilians also sustained burns in the blaze.
SNHR notes that approximately 60,000 individuals mostly children and women were detained illegally by Syrian Democratic Forces without any judicial warrants, with some of these people, all civilians, having been detained for years at the largely deserted al Hawl camp near al Hawl town in the eastern suburbs of Hasaka governorate, where they live in extremely poor living conditions which can be categorized as a form of collective punishment.
We call on the international community to increase humanitarian aid, particularly medical aid, to al Hawl Camp, in light of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, to put pressure on the SDF to release thousands of detainees living there, and to work for the resettlement of foreign residents in the camp to their countries.
