Geneva: Hundreds of children were imprisoned in an adult prison in Northeast Syria, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Wednesday, revealing their fate as a prisoner for the first time.
Children, most boys have been transferred to a prison from Al-Hol, a desert camp run by the Syrian Kurdish forces for 60,000 people from more than 60 countries related to Islamic State fighters, the AID Agency said).
Most are women and children who fled there after the last bag of the last collapsed two years ago.
“Hundreds of children, mostly boys, some Semaha 12, are detained in adult prisons, places they do not have,” Fabrizio Carbon, Director of the ICRC regional for the Middle East, said news direction.
The ICRC made 36 visits to places of detention throughout Syria last year, the only institution with these access.
It requires private talks with inmates for their care and provisions, but the secret findings are only shared with the authorities.
It has access to several places of detention in northeastern Syria – the Syrian area controlled by Kurdi – said a spokesman, refused to provide details.
The ICRC also renewed its appeal for countries to repatriate their citizens of Al-Hol Camp and guarded the family together, “as international law requires”.
Carbon, who visited Al-Hol four times in the past two years, said: “I really can’t get used to seeing so many children behind barbed wires.” ICRC runs a field hospital and provides food and water on a broad site.
Medical requirements remain large, with the increase in resident children died last year, including some of the preventable conditions, Carboni said.
UNICEF said eight children under 5 years have died in the camp last August, half of the complications related to malnutrition.
Another death is due to dehydration of diarrhea, heart failure, internal bleeding and hypoglycemia, said the UN children’s body.