Casualties due to fire in Hawl Camp in Syria’s Hasakah

World 11:10 AM - 2021-02-28

Photo Credit: AFP

On Saturday, three people died and 36 others were burnt in a fire in a section of Hawl Camp, east of Hasakah, northeast Syria.

 

The fire started in the fourth section to reach to an adjacent tent, according to sources from the camp.

 

The fire resulted in the burning of 36 residents of the the camp, 33 of which were transferred to nearby hospitals in the area.

 

According to authorities, 2 children and a woman died in the incident.

 

"Three people are dead -- two children and a woman," a local official told an AFP correspondent in the northeastern city of Qamishli by telephone.

 

The fire started after a stove exploded while displaced Syrians were celebrating a wedding, according to Sheikhmous Ahmed, an official in the semi-autonomous Kurdish administration.

 

The Hawl camp houses 62,000 Syrians and Iraqis and has a special section for 11,000 women and their children of 50 Western and Arab nationalities. The camp also hosts a separate annex for thousands of foreign women and children accused of family ties with IS.

 

Hawl camp consists of nine sections, eight of which are for Iraqi refugees and Syrian IDPs who fled ISIS war, but another section includes thousands of families of ISIS members.

 

NGOs have sounded the alarm over dire conditions in the Hawl and the lack of medical care.

 

A UN expert said earlier this month that people in the camp were living in "horrific sub-human conditions".

 

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the Hawl camp was home to more than 31,000 children aged under 12.

 

"The recent increase in violent events at the camp underscores that the camp is no place for any child to grow up," it said in a statement this month.

 

 

 

PUKmedia