HASAKA, Syria: The paramedics’ log at Al-Hol camp in eastern Syria lists the injuries and ailments of infants rushed from the battlefield to its crowded, dirty clinic: malnourishment, stunted growth, broken leg.
Those in critical need – mostly emaciated babies born in war to the wives of dead Daesh militants – are taken to the nearest hospital, a bumpy two-hour drive away. Other people cram into a waiting room with a tin roof in a growing queue for basic medical treatment.
At the hospital, staff have had to build two portacabins on the roof that serve as a makeshift ward for the treatment of malnourished babies, crammed sometimes two or three to a cot.
Lower floors are filled with teenagers missing limbs and women with shrapnel and bullet wounds.
The exodus during intense fighting of more than 60,000 people from Daesh’s final redoubt of Baghouz is overwhelming medical staff in eastern Syria who struggle to cope at the camp and ill-equipped hospitals.
Scores of people, mostly children, have died on the 150-mile (240-kilometer) journey to Al-Hol or soon after arriving, aid groups say.
“My son has a dislocated hip. He needs an operation urgently,” said Umm Mohammed, a veiled 33-year-old woman holding an expressionless six-month-old boy at the camp.
“Medics keep saying they have more urgent cases to deal with — wounds and shrapnel injuries.”
In the waiting area, dozens of people who mostly left Baghouz during a brief truce last month, arranged for civilians and surrendering militants to evacuate, sit on wooden benches or the concrete floor. Children in wheelchairs watch while babies scream as they are bandaged or given injections.
US-backed forces declared the defeat in March of Daesh’s self-proclaimed caliphate – the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria – after militants were driven out of the village of Baghouz where they made a months-long last stand.
The intense bombardment and fighting to dislodge the Sunni extremist group cost countless lives and wounded many more people, including the wives of fighters, their children, Daesh supporters and other civilians trapped by the militants in the enclave.
Those who evacuated in recent weeks have strained health care in Kurdish-run areas of eastern Syria beyond capacity.
In the clinic at Al-Hol, which is hosting more than 70,000 people displaced by violence, many people wore crude casts. One woman said she did not have enough painkillers for a wound to her hand – a long metal rod from the explosion that wounded her and killed three relatives was still lodged in her knuckle.
“I just want an X-ray at the hospital,” she said, giving her name as Umm Ahmed.
Starving children of Daesh
But local hospitals can take only the most severe cases.
In one room at the hospital in the nearby town of Hasaka, 19-year-old Baraa Al-Kurdi, the wife of a Syrian Daesh member, lay motionless next to a boy with third-degree burns covering his head.
“I was hit in the head by shrapnel,” Kurdi said quietly. “We were next to a car packed with ammunition and explosives, including suicide belts ready for fighters to use.
“My husband was killed. My daughter is one month old – she’s upstairs in the babies’ ward.”
Kurdi’s daughter was one of the few non-foreign infants in the ward.
Others, many blond or with Asian features, lay quietly in their cots with cheekbones showing and eyes sunken into their sockets from malnutrition. The patients’ register listed the names their mothers gave the hospital – Ali Azerbaijani, Ali Al-Uzbeki, Mohamed Skramo, a Norwegian name.
Many who remained in Baghouz until the end of the fighting were die-hard supporters of Daesh who flocked from all over the world to support its violent interpretation of Islam.
A number of European countries have refused to take back citizens who joined Daesh, putting additional strain on local authorities to deal with prisoners and patients.
“Children from the camp are arriving night and day. We currently have more than 70 babies being treated for malnutrition,” a nurse in the ward said.
She and other hospital staff declined to be named or for the hospital to be identified, fearing reprisals for treating the children of Daesh fighters.
“Most cases are treated and then returned to the camp. A few have died. We’re doing out best but had limited resources even before this influx.”
More than 200 people have died on their way to Al-Hol or after arriving in the camp in recent months, according to the International Rescue Committee. It said this week that around 30 to 50 cases every day were referred to local hospitals.
“We get 30 ambulances arriving each day,” a local health official said, also declining to be named.
“There’s aid from international organizations for those from Baghouz. They’re mostly foreign. We can barely provide health care for our own.”
![]()
Starved infants, wounded women crowd Syrian hospitals after Daesh defeat
Starved infants, wounded women crowd Syrian hospitals after Daesh defeat
- The exodus during intense fighting of more than 60,000 people from Daesh’s final redoubt of Baghouz is overwhelming medical staff in eastern Syria
- US-backed forces declared the defeat in March of Daesh’s self-proclaimed caliphate
Young Palestinian boy drowns in muddy water flooding his Gaza tent camp, UN says
JERUSALEM: The UN said Thursday that a Palestinian boy in the Gaza Strip drowned in floods that engulfed his tent camp, with videos showing rescuers trying to pry his body out of muddy waters by pulling him by the ankle. It was the latest sign of the miseries that winter is inflicting on the territory’s population, with many left homeless by the devastation from two years of war.
Health officials also reported the death of another 9 year-old boy in Gaza Thursday, but the circumstances were not clear.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli forces carried out a sweep of arrests, seizing around 50 Palestinians, many from their homes, a Palestinian group representing prisoners said.
As 2026 begins, the shaky 12-week-old ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has largely ended large-scale Israeli bombardment of Gaza. But Palestinians are still being killed almost daily by Israeli fire, and the humanitarian crisis shows no signs of abating. At least three Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza since the ceasefire came down, killed by militant attacks or explosive detonations.
Young boy drowned from flooding
UNICEF said Thursday that 7-year-old Ata Mai had drowned Saturday in severe flooding that engulfed his tent camp in Gaza City. Mai’s was the latest child death reported in Gaza as storms, cold weather and flooding worsen already brutal living conditions. Almost the entire population of more than 2 million people have lost their homes, and most are living in squalid tent camps with little protection from the weather.
UNICEF said Mai had been living with his younger siblings and family in a camp of around 40 tents. They lost their mother earlier in the war.
Video from Civil Defense teams, shown on Al Jazeera, showed rescue workers trying to get Mai’s body out of what appeared to be a pit filled with muddy water surrounded by wreckage of bombed buildings. The men waded into the water, pulling at the boy’s ankle, the only part of his body visible. Later, the body is shown wrapped in a muddy cloth being loaded into an ambulance.
Over past weeks, cold winter rains have repeatedly lashed the sprawling tent cities, causing flooding, turning Gaza’s dirt roads into mud and causing buildings damaged in Israeli bombardment to collapse. UNICEF says at least six children, including Mai, have now died of weather-related causes, including a 4-year-old who died in a building collapse.
The Gaza Ministry of Health says three children have died of hypothermia.
“Teams visiting displacement camps reported appalling conditions that no child should endure, with many tents blown away or collapsing entirely,” said Edouard Beigbeder, regional director for UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa division.
West Bank arrest raid
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said Israeli troops had arrested at least 50 Palestinians across the West Bank and interrogated many of them overnight. Most of the arrests occurred in the Ramallah area, said the group, which is an official body within the Palestinian Authority.
“These operations were accompanied by widespread raids, abuse and assault against detainees and their families, in addition to extensive acts of vandalism and destruction inside citizens’ homes,” the group alleged.
Israel’s military did not immediately comment on the raid.
The society says that Israel has arrested 7,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem this year, and 21,000 since the war began Oct. 7, 2023. The number arrested from Gaza is not made public by Israel.
Violence in the West Bank has surged during the war in Gaza, with the Israeli military carrying out large-scale operations targeting militants that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of thousands. There has also been a rise in Israeli settler violence and Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
Boy in Gaza dies
A nine-year-old boy, Youssef Shandaghi, died in Jabaliya in northern Gaza, not far from the so-called “Yellow Line,” the ceasefire demarcation between the more than half of the Gaza Strip still held by the Israeli military and the rest of the territory, where most of the population lives.
Two officials from Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, Director Mohammed Abu Selmiya and Managing Director Rami Mhanna, said the boy was killed by Israeli gunfire coming from across the Yellow Line. Abu Selmiya cited the report from the doctor who received Shandaghi’s body. Israel’s military said it had no knowledge of the incident.
But an uncle of the boy said he was killed by unexploded ordnance he had come across while playing. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting accounts.
Israeli troops almost daily open fire on Palestinians who come too close to the Yellow Line, often killing or wounding some, according to medical personnel and witnesses. The Israeli military says it fires warning shots if someone crosses the line and fires at anyone judged to be posing a threat to troops. It has acknowledged some civilians have been killed, including young children.
Since the ceasefire began, 416 Palestinians have been killed and 1,142 wounded in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry. The overall Palestinian death toll from the war is at least 71,271. The ministry, which does not distinguish between militants and civilians in its count, is staffed by medical professionals and maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by the international community.
Health officials also reported the death of another 9 year-old boy in Gaza Thursday, but the circumstances were not clear.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli forces carried out a sweep of arrests, seizing around 50 Palestinians, many from their homes, a Palestinian group representing prisoners said.
As 2026 begins, the shaky 12-week-old ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has largely ended large-scale Israeli bombardment of Gaza. But Palestinians are still being killed almost daily by Israeli fire, and the humanitarian crisis shows no signs of abating. At least three Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza since the ceasefire came down, killed by militant attacks or explosive detonations.
Young boy drowned from flooding
UNICEF said Thursday that 7-year-old Ata Mai had drowned Saturday in severe flooding that engulfed his tent camp in Gaza City. Mai’s was the latest child death reported in Gaza as storms, cold weather and flooding worsen already brutal living conditions. Almost the entire population of more than 2 million people have lost their homes, and most are living in squalid tent camps with little protection from the weather.
UNICEF said Mai had been living with his younger siblings and family in a camp of around 40 tents. They lost their mother earlier in the war.
Video from Civil Defense teams, shown on Al Jazeera, showed rescue workers trying to get Mai’s body out of what appeared to be a pit filled with muddy water surrounded by wreckage of bombed buildings. The men waded into the water, pulling at the boy’s ankle, the only part of his body visible. Later, the body is shown wrapped in a muddy cloth being loaded into an ambulance.
Over past weeks, cold winter rains have repeatedly lashed the sprawling tent cities, causing flooding, turning Gaza’s dirt roads into mud and causing buildings damaged in Israeli bombardment to collapse. UNICEF says at least six children, including Mai, have now died of weather-related causes, including a 4-year-old who died in a building collapse.
The Gaza Ministry of Health says three children have died of hypothermia.
“Teams visiting displacement camps reported appalling conditions that no child should endure, with many tents blown away or collapsing entirely,” said Edouard Beigbeder, regional director for UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa division.
West Bank arrest raid
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said Israeli troops had arrested at least 50 Palestinians across the West Bank and interrogated many of them overnight. Most of the arrests occurred in the Ramallah area, said the group, which is an official body within the Palestinian Authority.
“These operations were accompanied by widespread raids, abuse and assault against detainees and their families, in addition to extensive acts of vandalism and destruction inside citizens’ homes,” the group alleged.
Israel’s military did not immediately comment on the raid.
The society says that Israel has arrested 7,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem this year, and 21,000 since the war began Oct. 7, 2023. The number arrested from Gaza is not made public by Israel.
Violence in the West Bank has surged during the war in Gaza, with the Israeli military carrying out large-scale operations targeting militants that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of thousands. There has also been a rise in Israeli settler violence and Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
Boy in Gaza dies
A nine-year-old boy, Youssef Shandaghi, died in Jabaliya in northern Gaza, not far from the so-called “Yellow Line,” the ceasefire demarcation between the more than half of the Gaza Strip still held by the Israeli military and the rest of the territory, where most of the population lives.
Two officials from Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, Director Mohammed Abu Selmiya and Managing Director Rami Mhanna, said the boy was killed by Israeli gunfire coming from across the Yellow Line. Abu Selmiya cited the report from the doctor who received Shandaghi’s body. Israel’s military said it had no knowledge of the incident.
But an uncle of the boy said he was killed by unexploded ordnance he had come across while playing. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting accounts.
Israeli troops almost daily open fire on Palestinians who come too close to the Yellow Line, often killing or wounding some, according to medical personnel and witnesses. The Israeli military says it fires warning shots if someone crosses the line and fires at anyone judged to be posing a threat to troops. It has acknowledged some civilians have been killed, including young children.
Since the ceasefire began, 416 Palestinians have been killed and 1,142 wounded in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry. The overall Palestinian death toll from the war is at least 71,271. The ministry, which does not distinguish between militants and civilians in its count, is staffed by medical professionals and maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by the international community.
Latest updates
© 2026 SAUDI RESEARCH & PUBLISHING COMPANY, All Rights Reserved And subject to Terms of Use Agreement.