Two boys claim that women of ISIS in Syria’s Camp al Hol allegedly forced at least 10 boys into trying to impregnate them, according to a report by the Daily Beast.
Some of the boys were discovered and rescued by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from an underground tunnel inside the camp where they were being held by ISIS women.
Two victims — Ahmet, 13, and Hamid, 14 — told a guard at al Hol that they were being “forced to have sex with ISIS women and impregnate them,” according to what SDF officials relayed to the Daily Beast.
“Can you get us out of here?” the two boys begged the guard, according to SDF officials.
Staff at a rehabilitation center where the boys were transferred told the Daily Beast that one of the boys said he had been forced to have sex with eight ISIS women over the course of a few days.
A picture shows the Kurdish-run al-Hol camp, which holds relatives of suspected Islamic State (IS) group fighters in the northeastern Hasakeh governorate, during a security operation by the Kurdish Asayish security forces and the special forces of the Syrian Democratic Forces, on August 26, 2022. (Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Camp al Hol is a refugee camp in northeastern Syria near the Iraq border where at least 8,000 foreign women and children affiliated with ISIS are detained. Some of the women detained in al Hol maintain their loyalty to Islamic State despite its defeat in 2019.
Officials in the camp told the Daily Beast that the ISIS women wanted to get pregnant in order to build the next generation of Islamic State. The exact number of pregnancies in these camps is unknown since ISIS women will sometimes give birth without the aid of the camp’s doctors.
The sexual exploitation of boys is not isolated to just one camp, according to the Daily Beast. At another ISIS detention center to the south, al Roj, a boy was admitted to the hospital after he was drugged with a Viagra-like narcotic, security forces told the Daily Beast.
In an attempt to protect boys from this practice of sexual exploitation within ISIS detention camps, the SDF will transfer boys to rehabilitation centers once they reach puberty. (RELATED: Air Raid Sirens Blare In Israel As Palestinians Fire Rockets In Deadly Attack)
Mothers who are still loyal to ISIS and who do not want their children to be taken to rehabilitation centers have raised money on messaging apps and social media, such as Telegram, to pay ISIS fighters to take their sons from the camp, the Daily Beast reported.
Other mothers have reportedly begged camp officials to take their sons to the rehabilitation centers in order to save them from sexual exploitation.