Brides and kids of ISIS in hellish refugee camps

Australia’s Islamic State brides and their children are being held in two vast but massively under-resourced Syrian refugee camps.

A veiled woman, living in Al-Hawl camp which houses relatives of Islamic State group members, sits next to a tray of bread in northeastern Syria. Picture: AFP

Australia’s Islamic State brides and their children are being held in two vast but massively under-resourced Syrian refugee camps housing more than 80,000.

The two camps, in northern Syria, are Al-Hawl, which reportedly has more than 72,000 inhabitants, and Roj, which is catering to more than 10,000 refugees.

Aid agencies and Kurdish authorities — struggling to supply power, food, clean water and tents to the vast numbers of refugees — have labelled the situation a humanitarian emergency.

Al-Hawl was built in the 1990s and was designed to hold only about 5000 Iraqi refugees but over the past three weeks has been swamped when thousands emerged from the ruins of the terror group’s last stand at Baghuz.

At least 10 Australian ISIS wives, including the Sharrouf children, are in Al-Hawl with their 19 children.

Three of the wives are pregnant and a number of their children are under two.

Before Islamic State’s surrender last month Al-Hawl was ­reported to be holding 6000 ISIS women and children but those numbers were reported to have hugely ­increased in the past two weeks.

It is estimated Al-Hawl is now holding about 35,000 to 40,000 Iraqis, a similar number of ­Syrians and about 10,000 with other nationalities, according to International Committee for Red Cross president Peter Maurer, who visited the camp last month.

In a statement last month, Mr Maurer said dozens of children had died because of the cold and the conditions in Al-Hawl camp in the past weeks.

“Let’s not allow the fiery rhetoric around the foreign fighters blind us to the suffering arising out of the humanitarian emergency in northeast Syria today,’’ he said.

Aid workers can access the camps, but journalists have been allowed in on an ad hoc basis to interview various ISIS women.