BEIRUT: The beheaded bodies of two Egyptian girls were found Tuesday in a sprawling camp in northeastern Syria housing tens of thousands of women and children linked to the Daesh group, an opposition war monitor and local officials said.
The bodies of the girls were found in the sewage system of the camp days after they went missing, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The group said the girls had been beheaded. It was first such crime in weeks in the facility.
An official at the camp who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals said the girls were aged 11 and 13.
Siamand Ali, an official with the Kurdish-led US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, confirmed the killings.
Such grisly crimes in the camp are usually committed by members of Daesh sleeper cells, especially against women who resist abiding by the group’s extreme ideology. The Observatory, Ali and the official at the camp all blamed Daesh.
The killings are the first since US-backed Syrian fighters concluded a 24-day sweep at Al-Hol in mid-September during which dozens of extremists were detained and weapons were confiscated in the operation. The operation came after Daesh sleeper cells committed crimes inside the camp.
Following the rise of Daesh in 2014 and its declaration of a co-called Islamic caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq, thousands of men and women came from around the world to join the extremist group. Daesh lost the last sliver of land it once controlled in east Syria in March 2019, but since then its sleeper cells have been blamed for deadly attacks in Syria and Iraq.
“We are horrified to hear reports that two children have been killed in Al-Hol camp (in) Syria,” said Tanya Evans, Country Director for the International Rescue Committee in Syria. She added that the latest incident involving the deaths of children in the camp highlights the urgent need for longer-term solutions for children in Al-Hol.
Some 50,000 Syrians and Iraqis are crowded into tents in the fenced-in camp. Nearly 20,000 of them are children; most of the rest are women, the wives and widows of Daesh fighters.
Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders said the camp is witnessing pervasive violence, exploitation and lawlessness. The group said that countries with citizens held in Al-Hol have failed to take responsibility for protecting them.
The two teenage girls were found in a separated, heavily guarded section of the camp known as the annex, where an additional 2,000 women from 57 countries — considered the most die-hard Daesh supporters — along with their roughly 8,000 children are housed, the Observatory said.
The Observatory that tracks Syria’s 11-year conflict has recorded 28 crimes since the beginning of the year at Al-Hol in which 30 people were killed.
Bodies of 2 girls found in Syria camp housing Daesh families
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Bodies of 2 girls found in Syria camp housing Daesh families
- The bodies of the girls were found in the sewage system of the camp days after they went missing
- The killings are the first since US-backed Syrian fighters concluded a 24-day sweep at al-Hol in mid-September
Inaction over UAE’s role is prolonging ‘worst proxy war in the world,’ Sudan justice minister says
- Had international community characterized it as ‘military rebellion’ and countered Emirati sponsorship of ‘terrorist militia’ it would not have endured, he tells UN Human Rights Council
- He accuses paramilitary Rapid Support forces of ‘targeting basic infrastructure, strategic facilities and public services,’ and ‘atrocities beyond our capacity to describe’
NEW YORK CITY: Sudan’s justice minister on Wednesday blamed the prolongation of the near-three-year conflict in his country on what he described as the failure of the international community to properly label the war as a rebellion.
He also accused the UAE of sponsoring and arming a militia, the Rapid Support Forces, he said was responsible for widespread abuses.
“The war has outstayed its welcome and it should not have gone on for this long had the international community, and particularly the UN and its bodies, fulfilled their responsibility in rightly characterizing this military rebellion,” said Abdullah Mohammed Dirif, “and had they called a spade a spade and countered the Abu Dhabi government, which sponsored this terrorist militia and provided it with high-tech arms and provided it with mercenaries.”
Speaking during the high-level segment of the 61st session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, he warned that “the misleading characterization of this war has given a green light for the militia to keep its flagrant violations.”
The minister, who said he was speaking “on behalf of the government of Sudan and its people,” described the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF, which began in April 2023, as “one of the worst proxy wars in the world,” which had “targeted the very existence of Sudan and its people.”
The RSF has “continued its methodic targeting of basic infrastructure and strategic facilities and all public services,” Dirif said, adding that “the aim is to displace civilians against whom it has committed atrocities beyond our capacity to describe them.
“The violations and crimes of the militia are going unabated. Yesterday it invaded Moustahiliya region in northern Darfur. It targeted civilians, killed them. It looted. It scorched villages and cities.”
Sudan’s military was “conducting its constitutional responsibility by standing up to the militia, protecting the civilians, preserving the unity of the country and the rule of law,” he said, and it remains “committed to international humanitarian law and the rules governing military engagement, and taking into account proportionality principles in order to protect civilians.”
Khartoum remains “open to genuine efforts which aim to end the war and the rebellion” based on a road map presented by the president of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, and a peace initiative submitted by the prime minister to the UN Security Council on Dec. 22, he added.
Dirif stressed his government’s commitment to continued “cooperation and coordination with human rights mechanisms in Sudan,” including the presence of the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the country and the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Sudan.
“We recall, nationally, that achieving justice and redress to victims and ensuring impunity is a top priority for us,” he said, adding that authorities had made progress by investigating violations of national laws and international humanitarian laws.
He also underscored Sudan’s “commitment to continue facilitating and expediting delivery of humanitarian assistance to those affected by the war, including those under the control of the rebellious militia.”
Later, Sudan’s representative to the UN in Geneva exercised his right of reply and responded to prior remarks by the representative from the UAE.
“This is not a mere accusation, it is a well-known fact that is predicated on a number of evidence and documented proofs,” he said, referring to the UAE’s sponsorship of the RSF.
He cited in particular a report by a UN panel of experts on Sudan published on Jan. 15, 2024, which he described as “an official document of the Security Council” that referred to “lines of transferring weapons from Abu Dhabi International Airport” based on “clear-cut evidence.”
Other major international organizations and Sudan’s national commission of inquiry have provided further proof, he added, and Khartoum had submitted “a number of complaints, with proof, to the Security Council of the proven sabotage by the Abu Dhabi authority.”
The Sudanese representative continued: “It is paradoxical that the same authority that is sponsoring criminal militia, that the whole world is seeing and is attesting to its crimes, is now talking about peace in the Sudan. Peace is a noble value, that you have to be full of peace before you talk about it.
“The people of Sudan are only requesting this country stop sponsoring this criminal militia that is killing the innocent people in my country on a daily basis.”
The UAE has denied accusations that it provides military support to armed groups in Sudan, and says it supports efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
