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Video footage seen by the Daily Express shows vehicles storming into the camp.
16:51, Tue, Jan 20, 2026 Updated: 17:29, Tue, Jan 20, 2026
Al-Hol camp (Image: Getty)
A number of ISIS fighters have been freed from a refugee camp in Syria, as footage seen by the Daily Express shows armed men storming the area.
The SDF released shocking footage they claimed showed the moment Damascus forces entered al-Hol camp, the world’s largest ISIS detention facility with 30,000 inmates and their families. Enormous jubilant crowds chanting “allahu akbar”, meaning God is greatest in Arabic, could be seen running to greet heavily armed government forces who arrived bestride 4x4 pick-up trucks on Tuesday.
Enormous jubilant crowds chanting “allahu akbar” (Image: Daily Express)
However, Syria’s Interior Ministry accused the YPG/SDF terrorist group on Tuesday of releasing ISIS (Daesh) detainees and their families from prisons and withdrawing from guarding Al-Hol camp in eastern Hasakah without coordination with the government or the US-led international coalition.
In a statement, the ministry said after the recent ceasefire agreement between the Syrian government and the SDF, the group “released a number of prisoners from the ISIS terror organization and their families from detention facilities.”
“Today, its members assigned to guard Al-Hol camp in eastern Hasakah withdrew without any coordination with the Syrian government or the international coalition, in a move aimed at exerting pressure on the government through the counterterrorism file,” it added.
The scenes could be worrying for the West, as al-Hol camp has held some of the most extreme Islamic state acolytes. In August last year some of the 9,000 women held in a maximum security section of the facility burnt down tents erected by charities to help with education.
A Russian jihadi convert woman was also stoned to death for daring to wear Western clothes.
The Daily Express visited the camp previously controlled by the SDF in September last year and can verify the locations in the footage are genuine.
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Lucas Webber, senior Threat Intelligence Analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, told the Express: "IS leadership explicitly sees freeing detainees as essential for rebuilding its transnational network, and escapees could use established smuggling routes from northeast Syria into Iraq, Turkey, and further afield to link up with other cells or plot attacks."
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