'Really Tired': French ISIS Women Languish in Syria Camp

Amal, from France, needs crutches to get around Al-Hol camp after she was wounded in what was the ISIS group's last bastion in eastern Syria. (AFP)
Amal, from France, needs crutches to get around Al-Hol camp after she was wounded in what was the ISIS group's last bastion in eastern Syria. (AFP)
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'Really Tired': French ISIS Women Languish in Syria Camp

Amal, from France, needs crutches to get around Al-Hol camp after she was wounded in what was the ISIS group's last bastion in eastern Syria. (AFP)
Amal, from France, needs crutches to get around Al-Hol camp after she was wounded in what was the ISIS group's last bastion in eastern Syria. (AFP)

In an overcrowded desert camp for families linked to the ISIS group in northeastern Syria, a French woman begged for another chance so she and her children could go home.

In the same settlement, two other French women were more tepid about the prospect of repatriation, with one saying she feared being separated from her child.

In the squalid camp of Al-Hol, the question of return has sparked a divide among the French wives of ISIS fighters.

"We'd like the French government to give us the chance to make it up to them," 30-year-old Umm Mohammad told AFP in French.

"I think it's better they repatriate us... We'll be judged in France," said the mother of four from Paris, dressed in a black robe and face veil.

After years of fighting IS ISIS Syria's Kurds hold 4,000 women and 8,000 children from families linked to the extremist organization, mostly in Al-Hol.

Inside the camp, a veiled woman pushed a child in a pram, the bottom of her black robe caked in dry mud.

Two boys in jackets and rubber boots dragged a cart over a dirt field beyond rows of white tents, a little girl in a pink coat running alongside.

Umm Mohammad said that among her compatriots in Al-Hol's section for foreigners, "a huge amount want to go home".

"There's another half who don't want to go back, but that's their problem," said the widow, who says her French husband was killed in Hajin, once one of the last bastions of ISIS.

France has so far been reluctant to repatriate its nationals, allowing just a handful of children back on a case-by-case basis.

But in an apparent U-turn last week, Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet said she saw "no other solution" but to bring back extremists.

'Never killed'

Kurdish-led forces expelled ISIS from its last patch of territory in eastern Syria in March last year.

The extremists stand accused of a wide range of crimes during their failed five-year experiment in statehood in parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq.

But Umm Mohammad claimed she "did nothing at all" while living under ISIS.

"I never killed anyone," she said.

"We're really tired. Our children, we'd like them to go back to school."

In the camp's makeshift market, women dressed in black examined piles of colorful clothes laid out on blankets.

A woman carried a tray of white eggs, followed by another balancing a plastic crate of oranges on her head.

Away from the bustle, another French woman lamented the living conditions.

"I don't want to stay in this camp," said 23-year-old Nour, her brown eyes barely visible through the slit of her face veil.

"It's very difficult. We live in tents. It's cold. People are sick."

At least 371 children died in Al-Hol last year, the Kurdish Red Crescent has said, mainly from malnutrition, poor healthcare for newborns and hypothermia.

The Kurdish authorities have warned that conditions could deteriorate further after the UN Security Council on January 10 voted to restrict cross-border aid.

The Yaroubiya crossing on the Iraqi border was a key entry point for UN-funded medical aid reaching the area, including Al-Hol.

'France doesn't want us'

Nour, who said she was from the city of Montpellier in southern France, said she wanted to resume a normal life.

But she insisted she did not want to be separated from her children.

"If they're going to separate us, frankly I don't see the point of repatriating us," she said.

She too claimed she had not carried out any crimes.

"I stayed at home and educated my children," she said.

A third French woman -- who gave her name as Amal -- was more reluctant to speak.

"I having nothing to say," said the 25-year-old, after slowly gliding around the used clothes market on clutches.

She said she was wounded in the leg in Baghouz, a riverside hamlet where die-hard extremists made their last stand in 2019.

She would not reveal the nationality of her late husband and, under her face veil, her brown eyes avoided the camera.

"France doesn't want us... doesn't want ISIS," she said. "I don't want anyone to judge me."



As Israel Advances in Gaza, Many Exhausted Families Flee Again 

Displaced Palestinians arrive in Khan Younis, Gaza, on Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)
Displaced Palestinians arrive in Khan Younis, Gaza, on Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)
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As Israel Advances in Gaza, Many Exhausted Families Flee Again 

Displaced Palestinians arrive in Khan Younis, Gaza, on Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)
Displaced Palestinians arrive in Khan Younis, Gaza, on Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP)

As Israel orders wide new evacuations across the Gaza Strip, Palestinians say they are crushed by exhaustion and hopelessness at the prospect of fleeing once again. Many are packing a few belongings and trudging off in search of new shelters. Some say they just can’t bear to move.

When ordered out of Jabaliya in northern Gaza, Ihab Suliman and his family could only grab some food and blankets before making their way south March 19. It was their eighth time fleeing over the past 18 months of war.

"There is no longer any taste to life," said Suliman, a former university professor. "Life and death have become one and the same for us."

Suliman is among the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have fled temporary shelters since Israel shattered a 2-month-old ceasefire on March 18 with renewed bombardment and ground assaults.

Daunted by the notion of starting over, some Palestinians are ignoring the latest evacuation orders — even if it means risking their lives.

"After one year and a half of war that has exhausted everyone, children and their parents, too, are just worn out physically and mentally," said Rosalia Bollen, UNICEF’s communication specialist.

For the past month, Israel has blocked all food, fuel and supplies from entering Gaza, and aid groups say there are no more tents or other shelter supplies to help the newly displaced. On Tuesday, the World Food Program shut down all its bakeries in Gaza, on which hundreds of thousands rely for bread, because it had run out of flour.

Many are fleeing with almost no belongings

Israel’s evacuation orders now cover large swaths of the Gaza Strip, including many areas of Gaza City and towns in the north, parts of the southern city of Khan Younis, and almost the entire southern city of Rafah and its surroundings.

As of March 23, more than 140,000 people had been displaced again since the end of the ceasefire, according to the latest UN estimate — and tens of thousands more are estimated to have fled under evacuation orders over the past week.

Every time families have moved during the war, they have had to leave behind belongings and start nearly from scratch, finding food, water and shelter. Now, with no fuel entering, transportation is even more difficult, so many are fleeing with almost nothing.

"With each displacement, we’re tortured a thousand times," Suliman said. He and his family found an apartment to rent in the central town of Deir al-Balah. He said they’re struggling, with no electricity and little aid. They must walk long distances to find water.

Fleeing from Rafah on Monday, Hanadi Dahoud said she is struggling to find essentials.

"Where do we go?" she said. "We just want to live. We are tired. There are long queues waiting for bread and charity kitchens."

During the two-month ceasefire that began in mid-January, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flowed back to their neighborhoods. Even if their homes were destroyed, they wanted to be near them — sometimes setting up tents on or next to the rubble.

They had hoped it would be the end of their displacement in a war that has driven nearly the entire population of some 2.3 million from their homes.

The war in Gaza began with Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel. Since then, Israel's retaliatory offensive has left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in squalid, crowded tent camps or schools-turned-shelters. Most have had to move multiple times to escape fighting and bombardment.

Shelter is limited

Some shelters are so crowded they have had to turn families away, said Shaina Low, communications adviser at the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Many families are streaming back to Muwasi, a barren coastal stretch of southern Gaza where, before the ceasefire, hundreds of thousands had been packed into tent cities. During the ceasefire, the camps thinned out as people returned to their neighborhoods. Those returning are finding that tents are scarce; aid groups say they have none to give out because of Israel’s blockade.

More than a million people urgently need tents, while thousands of others require plastic sheets and ropes to strengthen fragile makeshift shelters, Gavin Kelleher, NRC’s humanitarian access manager in Gaza, said at a recent media briefing.

For now, people are cramming into tents or moving into destroyed buildings that are in danger of collapse — trying "to put absolutely anything between themselves and the sky at night," Kelleher said.

Relocating and reinstalling health and nutrition facilities amid declining aid supplies has been "absolutely draining" for families and humanitarian workers, UNICEF's Bollen said.

"Our job would be much easier if we had access to our supplies and if we didn’t have to fear for our own lives at every moment," she said.

Khaled Abu Tair led a donkey cart with some bread and blankets as he and his family fled Khan Younis. He said they were heading "God knows where," and would have to set up on the street a makeshift shelter out of sheets.

"We do not have a place, there are no tents, no places to live or shelter, or anything," he said.

Some can’t bear to move

When orders came to evacuate Gaza City’s Tel Hawa district, Sara Hegy and her mother decided to stay. Their original home in the nearby district of Zaytoun is too destroyed to be livable, and Hegy said she was in despair at the thought of starting over again.

"I had a breakdown the day the war resumed. I didn’t leave the house," said Hegy, who had started an online tutoring job a few days before Israel relaunched its assault.

Others dread the evacuation orders that might come.

Noor Abu Mariam said she and her brother and parents have already been displaced 11 times over the course of the war, moving through tent camps and houses around the south, each time starting over in the search for shelter, food and supplies.

Now back in Gaza City, she can’t do it again, she said.

"I refuse to leave the house no matter the circumstances because I am not psychologically prepared to relive those difficult days I lived in the south," she said.